As yesterday’s pitch blackness turns into cheerful dawn, our joggers pass by what appears to be a WWI “doughboy” sleeping on a park bench. The sight inspires Les (and Tom Batiuk) to launch another zinger about how “the Wall Street crowd” (aka the “greedy, immoral morons“) create so much misery for us decent folk.
19 thoughts on “Bench Depress”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
But did they stop to help him? No, of course not. Self-righteous arrogant pricks, so quick to lay blame but doing nothing proactive to help
Wasn’t there a story line about how the Montoni pizza empire went into decline because to cut costs they made sub-standard pizza? Oh wait that had nothing to do with today’s strip. I guess the doughboy distracted me.
Well back to the strip at hand, I don’t know what TB’s problem is here since he’s cornered the market on gloom.
Yeah, it’s amazing how some people can be wealthy and comfortable, while others have barely enough to survive. You know what that’s like? EVERY OTHER PERIOD IN HUMAN HISTORY EVER.
Les is getting paid to write a comic about marrying his second wife, and he’s complaining the Wall Street crowd doing so well? What a jackass.
Les has the legs of someone who hasn’t walked under their own power in a decade.
Yes, those “Wall Street,” um, vampire-wolves are sure evil! While cartoonists who provide NOTHING of value whatsoever should continue to be published forever, because Les’ wife died of CANCER. And Les himself is PURE CANCER.
But those who make money must be punished! Unless they make a bad comic strip…in that case, they need Prizes!
A homeless guy sleeping on a Westviewian park bench? THAT is truly bottoming out. Obviously he doesn’t have any teaching, writing, pizza or comic book skills, otherwise he’d be turning down jobs left and right.
“The Wall Street crowd”…there’s a nebulous, easy-to-jab target. Because EVERYONE hates those financial fat-cats and their hedge whatzits and bond trading thingies. He’s just such a lazy hack and he’s never more hacky than when he’s trying to be “topical”.
And what’s with the green leaves on the trees? Everyone’s been raking and dodging falling leaves for a month already, so which is it?
Yes, Les should watch himself when he talks about people getting undeserved wealth.
I mean, after all, he was put up in a luxury hotel in Los Angeles for most of the summer, on someone else’s dime. He didn’t do any evident work on the project he was ostensibly there to do. In fact, again and again and again he showed that he had no idea what was going on at any time even though he was in the room and.. well, let’s just call it loafing closely to the people making the decisions and doing all the work. He actually fell asleep on the job and had a dream which made him realize that what he really wanted to do was quit completely yet still collect his fee, and that’s just what he did. And whatever project he was supposed to be working on produced no tangible results whatsoever.
And on his day job, he’s never shown doing anything but reading from Cliff’s Notes in front of his students and hanging around talking to his friends, when he’s not on months-long vacations to promote his book about his dead wife. He’s utterly useless, and yet, his employer has made multiple cuts to its staff and he still somehow has a job.
Face it, Les, there’s not a single person connected to Wall Street who deserves their wealth less than you deserve yours.
Meanwhile, he’d probably tell us that the man on the bench was either lazy or didn’t have enough grit or some such other objectivist balderdash.
@Mason Jarr Well, that’s typical FW for ya.
I was going to accuse TB of trying to instigate class warfare with today’s strip, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that pretty much the entirety of Act III has been a war against class.
The entire strip was ruined for me when Funker’s sensational red long-sleeved sweatshirt suddenly became a Montoni’s short-sleeved T-shirt in P3. Simply ruined. CONTINUITY, PEOPLE!
I worked as a stock trader for a while in New York, Most of which consists of people who do a lot of hard work researching and studying markets. They take huge risks and tons of pressure. Many are not even college graduates like Summer and Keisha will be. They a lot of times work on commission, which means they need to succeed to eat.
The problem with idiots like Batiuk is that the use “Wall Street” as a throwaway term, when they really mean the wealthy or the 1%. These people can get their wealth from several sources. Hell many of the 1% are oil giants and people who inherited money. Many of them worked hard and did a lot to get to become millionaires and billionaires.
There are legitimate arguments on both sides of the wealth disparity in America. What I hate is Batiuk’s frigging “bumper sticker” philosophy that hinges on buzz words that he thinks are “in”.
I like to think the sleeping man in one of Les’s prior students who he belittled to the point that he simply gave up.
You know, a guy with a one-year lead time should not attempt topical humor.
It’s funny how just a few weeks ago Les held a charity fund raiser in this very park. I guess the fun run participants either hurdled the vagrants or simply ran around them, I guess. I hope they at least gave the guy a free Lisa’s Legacy T shirt or something.
@Westview Oncologist: It’s easy for people like Batiuk to blame someone he can see even if that someone is a very small cog in a very big machine.
What I find remarkable after reading Charles Comment of the Year – which is every bit true – is that somehow Battic expects people to actually like Les, to want to know him and follow him and share his Precious Life Moments. Either that or Battic knows exactly what a chart-toppin’ schmuck Les is and has, all along, been tediously building the least likable character in all of written history, panel by excruciating panel.
Charles: The funniest and scariest thing about that arc was that TB obviously didn’t intend to depict Les as a lazy arrogant jerk who essentially bilked a production company and probably blew lots of easy money in the process. He wanted the readers to see Les as a hero who was doing battle with yet another nebulous and broad concept, in that case “Hollywood”. I would attribute that to the author simply being way out of touch, but it isn’t just that. It’s the way he insists on always fitting everything into his worldview, which seems to be “all resistance is futile unless Lisa’s dignity is at stake”. Everyone just bemoans the influence of these malevolent unseen realities that always force their hands (or in Becky’s case, hand). “Wall Street”, “Hollywood”, “the universe”, “the school budget”, “dispassionate collectors who’ve monetized comic book collecting” and so forth. In his mind, Les was resisting those forces, which based on the way he writes the strip, is pretty much the finest thing anyone could possibly do.
And today “Wall Street” is responsible for the poor sap sleeping in the park, even though those two assholes have no idea who he even is. And our two heroes keep on running because (shrug) what else can ya do with this economy and all? It’s why this strip fascinates me so much, he’s created this self-sustaining hackiness that just constantly fuels itself. It’s a monumental piece of laziness the likes of which we’ll never see again.