Yesterday our amazing Batiukstorian, Billy the Skink, was able to dig back in his prodigious archives and find us some context.
So Batiuk is, once again, referencing actual past strips and not wildly making up new scenarios set during Act I as many of us had assumed. Which is the niggling pebble in the metaphorical shoe that is Batiuk’s relationship to his ‘canon’.
On the one hand, he’s always ready to wildly re-contextualize the past, or out and out retcon it. Major arcs and characters get Memory Holed and never show up again, even when it would be appropriate. Such as, say, the wedding of a parent.
On the other hand, we have this. Batiuk calling back to an obscure strip that was printed before my parents had graduated high school.
If Les was only on the team for a week, who took this picture? Why was it taken? Who developed it? And who thought to give it to Bull? And why, of all the piles and piles of memorabilia packed in that basement Bull-pen, did Linda think this one picture was significant?
I’m guessing most of us have shoved in a box somewhere an odd collection of random pictures from highschool. Including several standing next to that one kid in choir. That awkward smelling kid, whose name we now couldn’t recall if someone had a taser to our armpits.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Oh
My
GOD
Batiuk is going to make Bull’s death All About Les, isn’t he? Good GOD, is there no depth to which this man will not sink to promote The Worst Character In The Entire World?
It’s like he woke up one morning and suddenly realized he hadn’t really done a lot of Les arcs over the last few years and decided to make up for lost time. All of a sudden he’s everywhere, with the cancer book and the high school memories and the deeply conflicted feelings and that f*cking beard.
Why couldn’t Batiuk have stayed in bed and kept his nightmares to himself?
Yep that’s what’s going on here.
“My husband died”
“My wife died and i was cut from the High School football team”
“oh you poor thing.”
Appalling. Simply appalling.
Please… Literally every storyline in this strip the last 10-15 years is about (in order:) Comic books, Les, Lisa’s Zombie Corpse, Dinkle, Cindy…
Well, over the last 4-5 years (ever since the Lust For Lisa arc) he really hasn’t done a lot of major Les arcs. The nonsense about the tree, some WHS hi-jinx, but no lengthy plodding nine week Les arcs like he used to do frequently. I think that is about to (sigh) change.
He still thinks he has New York Times readers now, and he has to present Saint Les as intended.
Batiuk frequently forgets the events of the very stories he’s telling, then completely out of nowhere he references a forty-three year old Act I gag like continuity is second nature to him. There’s no accounting for it or explaining it.
Like this story. “Bull bullies Les” was resolved years and years ago. Bull’s past was explained away (abusive parent) and he and Les went on to be friends and co-workers for many years. But apparently THAT whole thing has been forgotten and Les is apparently still deeply conflicted…again. But he has no reason to be, as it was already settled. The attention to continuity just seems to come and go randomly, in the strangest of ways.
Creepy Les, closet sporto? Point to the tackling dummy and show us where the bad man cut you, Les!
And here is the dirty deed getting done at the end of a one week story arc that saw Les wear a helmet that was too big for his head, not get practice reps at tailback, and lie on the bench with a non-contact nosebleed.
The next week Les was behind a typewriter writing stale jokes about Paul and Linda McCartney for some reason. Really.
I’m embarrassed that I grinned at that. 🙂 Les’s stupidity used to be so funny to me!
USED TO BE.
Don’t be embarrassed; it’s perfectly okay to admit Batiuk’s content in the 70s and 80s was good to occasionally great… I chuckled at it too.
How on earth could any helmet be too big for Les Moore’s head?
Hey, check out panel 3. Looks like we’re in for something exciting after all – it’s a Misery-Off! And the competition is fierce!
Let’s cut to the chase here… this is going to be about Les getting over being bullied, isn’t it? Even though they had a friendship for many years in adulthood, that extended to Bull helping Les’ daughter rehab her knee, and Bull managing Les’ precious Lisa’s Legacy run. But no, as we saw at the funeral, Les just isn’t over it yet.
It’s creepy how much the town of Westview indulges Les’ bizarre psychological needs. Like with the new Lisa’s Story movie, he didn’t even start it – Mason Jar did! And then a random person came up to say yes, Lisa’s Story is a universal tale that must be seen by all. Now Linda invites him over to show him this picture when he should be the one consoling her.
Les’ life is like the part in Being John Malkovich where John Malkovich takes the passageway into his own head, and all the dialog in the world is just “Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich.” Which should be horrifying, but Les’ ego is so huge it seems perfectly normal to him.
Of course, the worst of it is that after this exercise in Les finally letting go of the past, things will reset and he’ll be right back to blaming his problems on a ghost. Letting go of high school is not something a pea-brain like Batiuk can do because it’s all he’s got.
“Lucky you! No, I mean that most sincerely! If you had made the team, you would have become a football-obsessed loser whose mean spirit fattened on the brutal competition, until CTE finally turned you into a helpless, useless man-child whose funeral went almost unnoticed. I thank God every day that you are still your old self, Les, perfect in every way, unlike my worthless husband!”
That’s the most disgusting direction I can imagine for this arc. But I’m sure Batiuk will come up with something far more swinish.
Holy shit that strip ran the week I was born(!)
Krankenschaaften: You don’t call a “tech guy” for that, you call a hipster (and if you do, hide that rotary telephone you leased from Ohio Bell back when LBJ was president)…
“Bull’s death wasn’t an accident, Less!”
“Uh-huh. Say! Do you have any old pictures of Bull and me?”
Touché Batty, Touché