“I can sort of pace myself by counting each breath as I run”. There Batom, was that so damned hard? If I didn’t speak fluent Batomese that first sentence would have confused the hell out of me. The Medina Mangler strikes again.
And here’s an alternate sentence to replace whatever the hell Les is jabbering about in panel two: “Mtlplx foplo sghrklit ba nono Carl Lewis blah trsphliy”. It makes just as much sense, it’s just as relevant and it’s definitely just as funny. I have to assume Batom was getting all worked up about the 2012 Olympics around that time, thus the completely random Usain Bolt comment. More like Insane Dolt if you ask me.
My overwhelming hatred for Les is really beginning to boil and we’re only two days into this thing. Funky must still owe him money because there’s no rational explanation for why he’s not bouncing Les’ head off the sidewalk in panel three. What a dick.
Son of Stuck Funky 
As Les is considered TB’s avatar then panel three has to be most honest statement in the history of this
stripsequential art.KillLes was here.
Sgt. Saunders, don’t you mean KillMoore was here 🙂
“how many breaths I take as I inhale.” Uh…by definition, isn’t that “one”?
beckoningchasm: Seriously, that sentence is just f*cking terrible. I’m no “writer” nor have I ever been nominated for any prestigious writing awards, but damn man, that is just plain bad. Unless he’s trying to explain that Funky has some sort of rare breathing disorder, that is.
Les is an English teacher, right?
And how the hell is a middle aged man who probably only has irregular exercise saying all that while jogging?
You know maybe Funky might actually lose weight if he chose a better excercise buddy than Les “Pace-Killer” Moore. Too bad Frankie left town.
I’d love to see Batiuk’s next pompous comic collection contain panel 3 on the cover. It could even contain a cutout of Batiuk’s face over Les’s.
With all due respect to The Diva, I think this should be the last panel of every other Funky Winkerbean strip.
The strips in between would show Les, a la Beetle Bailey after a Sarge beating session, all scrambled and stuff. He could whimper something like “Kill….me….”
Shit’s getting old, Ho…
@Josh Tcat, “Les Moore has a different fate awaiting him. Someday, a junior high kid will beat him to death with a monkey wrench for reasons no one can explain. Wally will discover the body.”
The problem won’t be that no one can explain the kid’s motive, the problem will be that there will be too many reasons to chose from.
What better way for a reality-based comic strip to depict contemporary issues affecting young adults in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner than by showing two middle aged guys jogging? I ask you.
Les: you’re not in front of a classroom again until September. You can take a break from trying to act smarter than everybody else.
Les Moore, the world’s worst Topper.
Maybe losing the headband would help? It worked for Lebron James.
Funky: “Nice headband, Les. Did you steal it from a piece of broccoli?”
Les: “No. This weird girl has been hanging around with Summer and Cayla at the Taj-MOORE-Hal these past few weeks. For some reason, she’s been sleeping in one of MY beds and eating some of MY food. But when I ask Summer and Cayla about why she can’t leave and get a hotel somewhere, Summer looks at me like I ate a bug and Cayla kicks me in the shin! ….women, you know? They just aren’t sensible like we men are!”
Funky: “…*…so you stole Keisha’s headband?”
Les: “WHO?!?”
Seriously, though, one would think a comic strip that “tackles real life issues affecting young adults in a sensitive manner” WOULD do at least a few strips about the difficulties and pressures of a successful blended family. Even the most mature, loving and kind-hearted souls can be driven absolutely nuts by it!
Heaven knows, we’ve seen plenty of signs that Les isn’t dealing well with it. He never calls his daughters. He never visits with them. He apparently communicates with them in no way whatsoever UNLESS they happen to be immediately in front of him. In which case he’ll give Summer terse, clipped info dumps and token, trite feigning of affection. Keisha? Ignores her entirely.
And I hardly know where to start on the ugly hints we’ve seen of his true relationship with Cayla.
You want drama for your Realistic, Deep, and Meaningful strip? THERE IT IS.
But, nope, just recycled jokes about a fat load and a pompous know-it-all jogging.
Um, who the heck planted that tree right in the middle of the street in Panel 1?!
I can’t come up with a joke, my brain is tied in a knot from trying to decipher the abuse of the English language in today’s strip.
Amazing….. after months of that god-awful frankie/lisa story arch…on top of the trash before it.. Tom amazes us all by continuing to pile the shit heap higher and higher.
He claims to be relevant…. but he’s worse then BLONDIE & DAGWOOD
While this arc seems to be aggravating a few people, I gotta admit – I’m enjoying this. In a weird way.
I mean, I started following Funky (via this site, via Comics Curmudgeon, via the late Comics Alliance) last March. I’ve weathered some things in that time – the incredibly anticlimactic Gay Prom, the rushed and overly-saccharine Les n’ Cayla Wedding, the inexplicable Crazy Harry Gets Fired story. (I wasn’t actually reading during the Kilimanjaro story, so I dodged that bullet.) All of these strips were tough, but I could take them.
Then, oh so long ago (seriously, when did this start?), Frankie showed up, and I got to be taken along on an honest-to-god Lisa Story Arc. I’d never witnessed it before, and it was, er…amazing. It had all the bad traits of the other arcs I’d seen, but combined, and brought to a new level. Here we had events moving at a snail’s pace, but then suddenly leaping ahead past what might be vital information. We had characters come to conclusions that Made No Goddamn Sense Whatsoever, but somehow, it works out in their world. We have unnecessary cameos from another strip, we brush on a fairly weighty subject with all the deft manipulation of a babboon wearing oven mits, we (I think) forget to actually retcon anything in an event that was for the purpose of retconning. And then, it just sort of ends. Seriously, I feel that Funky Winkerbean serves as a great example of how not to write stories, and this arc really summed that up.
But now, it’s over! It’s over, and I read the whole thing, and came out the other side! I feel a rest is deserved. So, I feel quite happy to kick back and watch two old idiots be jerks to each other for a week.
Chaos Clockwork: Welcome to the fray. I’d suggest checking out the “other crap” section above for a small sample of some of the other “memorable” FW arcs of years gone by. I believe the official FW site features a few old arcs as well. If you felt confounded and baffled by those recent arcs, well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, as the old song goes. Enjoy!
What’s the over/under for Les sitting in his porch swing? It’s summertime, people, we will not make it to August 1st without a strip or 3 of Les sitting on his ass and pontificating.