NB: BC does not stand for BeckoningChasm! Let’s just swat those rumors down right now!
Now, as for today’s thing…whoa, Les is straying from the Moby Dick/“Snows of Kilimanjaro” syllabus! Let’s be generous and say he’s only brought this particular work into his class in order to point out its shortcomings compared to those two works…”bullying it,” in a sense. Now, I confess my knowledge of ancient texts is pretty weak, so can anyone tell me what this work might be? The Satyricon, maybe?
Given the sorry state of the Westview educational system, Owen’s answer seems to be a genuine one, not borne of his own personal ignorance. There’s no evidence of a typical religious presence in Westview, although I seem to recall a priest performing Les and Cayla’s wedding. So Jesus Christ (no matter your personal view of him) would not be an item that anyone in this benighted town would discuss openly, and hence the meaning of “BC” wouldn’t be common knowledge among the community’s teens. (It’s not BeckoningChasm so stop asking!)
In fact, seeing the evidence of how the characters in this comic regard the endless and instant hostility of the cosmic fate that continuously observes and judges them, I suspect that the only gods known in Westview are those theorized by H.P. Lovecraft…
–okay, that was a jokey aside, but in all seriousness, it suddenly makes the undercurrents behind this strip much more interesting. Did Lisa really die of cancer? Did Susan Smith really leave town? Last year’s high school class…have they really gone on to college somewhere? Where are Jinx, Chien, Crazy Harry’s kids, Rachel’s son, Wally’s son? Why aren’t they mentioned at all? Did you notice we didn’t have a “senior prom/graduation day” arc this year–what happened to last year’s entire junior class? And maybe Khan isn’t “Khan,” but the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred? Maybe “Citizen Khan’s” isn’t a deli at all!
Now I really want to see a Sunday strip showing the Westview folks attending mass. I want to see a priest facing the crowd and saying, “Okay folks, repeat after me–Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!”
*cough* Well, rather than end on that dark thought, let’s take a closer look at panel two, where Les is at his most punchable.
There you go. As our friends at Mad magazine once said, “Suitable for framing or wrapping fish!”
(Credit Where It’s Due Department: image of Cthulhu created by someone who calls himself Somniturne1)
I thank you for your indulgence, fellow snarkers! As Fearless Leader says, stay Funky!
Son of Stuck Funky 
Give it up for Beckoning Chasm!
Good work, BC (Not Before Christ)!
Les always seemed more like a BCE type, if you know what i mean. Oh, and is he expanding into teaching history? Or classics? English didn’t exist in it’s present form until at least.. 400 years before.. computers… why, the kid may be on to something.
How many courses does Les teach at Westview High??!!! He seems to have had Chullo Boy in every class for the last three years! Either Cory keeps failing this class or Les is truly on a mission to spread his douchiness as may times as humanly possible to the youth of Westview.
bad wolf: I remember studying the Oresteia trilogy in my high school English class, so yeah, I can see Les referencing a source that far back.
Now, I confess my knowledge of ancient texts is pretty weak, so can anyone tell me what this work might be?
The Epic of Gilga-meh?
The I-Feel-Illiad?
The Code of Harumph-These-Lazy-Kids?
The Art of Bore?
Les-istrata?
An important ancient text in Westview is probably Action Comics No. 1.
…not to forget Rana the adopted Afgan girl ,,,or Cory who is in the Army now.
They’ve….disappeared and were very attached (wrists and ankles).
But what about the Butler…Katherword?
Nicely done, Beckoning: Lord knows he gave you almost nothing to work with over the last two weeks. But polishing turds is what we do here…
Man that panel two Les close-up is as horrifying as anything he’s ever done. Oozing smugness and intellectual superiority from every pixel, just revolting.
Merry Pookster: Don’t forget, Tom’s promised us that as Cory goes…um, we’ll learn nothing at all about his life in the army (In fact, we can safely assume we won’t actually see him on panel again until he’s Tragically Killed In Action Because Being a Soldier is Bad), but we -will- see Holly shop for Komix for him at the Komix Korner!
Oh, joy. 😛
Also, has Les -ever- been depicted actually TEACHING? He never teaches. He just gives Trivial Pursuit style questions or Wikipedia style recaps….while at the same time bashing his students’ usage of such sources. Hmmmm….
Well, Les doesn’t look like he’s about to have an aneurysm from someone not knowing something, so progress I guess. Still would be nice if he taught something from after the 1930s. Maybe English as it is currently used?
@John…..Sgt. Cory will represent our “Boots on the Ground” in Syria.
Maybe another “Red Rascal”.
I see Les has updated Westview’s English curriculum this year to include the modern art of acronyms. He thought he’d try something elementary like BC, before moving on to complex material like LMFAO, POTUS, and STFU (complex only to him, of course). Though I’m kind of surprised Owen didn’t just assume the “C” stood for “Chullo.”
It’s interesting how Owen has been in Les’ class for five or six years already, yet he’s still a blithering idiot. So we can conclude that Les sucks at his job as much as everyone else in town does.
Exactly what would Les be teaching that would lead him to ask that question rather than something more pertinent to the text he’s assigned? It has literally nothing to do with what he’s presumably teaching.
I can just imagine Les quizzing his idiot students about Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury:
“Honeysuckle is mentioned often in this book. Do you think bees like honeysuckle?”
Hamlet: “Is a curtain called a curtain if it’s not next to a window? What should it be called instead?”