today’s strip
Les with his hands where nobody can see them, staring silently at a blonde woman. What else is new?
Really though, what is the point of this strip? Someone expresses condolences to Les, and he stares into space sullenly and silently? Are we supposed to think she’s silly for saying she’s sorry? Is the point that “sorry” isn’t enough, and she should be weeping and rending her clothes at Les’s feet.
You know what I love in this situation? If Cass’s next lines were “I lost my husband to cancer. And also my children.”. Take that, Les.
So They Got Drinks After All
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Son of Stuck Funky 
If Batiuk made every strip from here to the 50th nothing but Les being severely beaten and thrown down the stairs, I would do my best to make him win all the awards.
I, for one, would be making a little wax doll for every damn strip and paying off every Santeria priestess I can find from LA to Medina. One of them’s gotta take.
I guarantee if he had a strip where Les was brutally murdered, it’d be the best-selling “order a print” Comics Kingdom has ever seen.
I’d paper my walls with it.
I must refrain from an upvote because as I reply, you have thirteen of them. I wouldn’t want to be the one to disturb such transcendence!
I hate how on one hand Lisa’s death is a constant weight Les had to continually bear, but on the other hand his reaction when it’s brought up is almost always a punchline to another context-heavy gag about how people are constantly inconsiderately bringing it up. Then on a whole other level it’s another reminder that BatYak once wrote a story about Les’ wife dying from cancer and you really should check it out if you haven’t already. It’s like a big rotten onion, layer after layer of pure stink.
Obviously Cassidy is “the one” and the cancer movie will eventually at long last come to fruition. They should do it in 3-D like Summer once suggested (no, really, she did). Imagine the pathos coming RIGHT AT YOU! “Whoa, dude! It was like they were prepping ME for an IV drip!”.
Masone: “Lisa’s Story is about Les.”
Les glares while thinking to himself: “You didn’t have to be so blunt about it.”
“Love triangles are hard enough, without discovering that your young wife chose cancer over you!”
Mason, don’t tell Les to speak! Tell him to roll over and play dead!
Better yet, cut out the “play” part and just kill Les.
It will be like Old Yeller… make that Old Yeller Shirt.
But…but…there’s no possibility of a sequel!
“Lisa’s Story II: The Squickening.” Les returns from the dead with the Devil’s hoofprint on his ass. He is doomed to wander Westview until he can find someone who will listen to his story. The high point is when a Ouija board throws itself into a termite nest to escape him.
That’s a movie that I’d watch (of course I’ve been under a shelter-in-place order since the end of March).
Les with the look that says:
“Sorry? Why? If Lisa hadn’t died of cancer I’d have never sold a book, much less be sitting here pitching a movie.”
Is Todd somehow genetically programmed to fuck up ALL of the terms he uses, or what? An “elevator pitch” usually means selling yourself and/or your services to a prospect in 20-30 seconds. A “high concept” film can be pitched in three sentences, so to specifically ask for an “elevator pitch” for it is moronic, since that’s what you’ll be getting anyway. The fact that they’re pitch-driven is what defines them.
But Lisa’s Story is NOT a “high concept” film, despite Todd’s massive ignorance that it’s not a synonym for “high brow.” (Which LS isn’t either, but I digress). So asking for it to be “elevator pitched” is moronic. Pride and Prejudice, Pulp Fiction or any other character-driven low-concept project can’t be sold in 20-30 seconds, which is exactly why they aren’t “high concept.” You actually need to read the screenplay to appreciate the story, not have someone tell you all about it.
But what’s really laughable here is that in a cheap, pathetic grab for the “I’m so sorry” pathos, Todd unknowingly cops to the fact that Lisa’s Story is NOT about Lisa dying and losing HER life – it’s all about narcissistic Less’s loss. As if that were ever in any doubt.
Alternate theory: Cassidy is “the one” and Les is going to torpedo it.
Because that is some serious hostility on Les’ face. That is an expression of “this woman does not understand Lisa’s story, I’m offended you even considered her, and I’m going to sit here in angry silence until you ask her to leave and beg my forgiveness.”
Would Batiuk makes his self-insertion character that much of an asshole? I think he might.
He already has
Unbelievable. Does TomBa want us to believe that Les is speechless in grief over Lisa, whose death, according to the time jump, occurred over twenty years ago. If that’s the case, I really do hope that Cayla is getting love and support from someone else on the side.
Les is rapidly approaching being the most despicable character in literary history.
Honestly, if Les is in this state I don’t see how he’s not constantly weeping at the fact the Cayla’s not his True Wife, let alone be able to be remotely intimate at all with her.
All Les’ emotions are fake. He reacts to Lisa in whatever way will give him what he wants at that moment.
When Mason needs Les to sign the shopping agreement, he does it with that look on his face like Lisa’s just died again. When Les wants to drive the final nail into the coffin at the second pitch meeting, he makes wisecracks at Lisa’s expense. The next day, he does it again, and shames Mason for joining in. Now that there’s a chance this movie might get made, he’s turned to icy silence, in response to some imperceivable affront from someone he met two minutes ago.
This is a common tactic of abusers: they constantly change the rules. They want you on your guard, they want you constantly trying to please them, they want you confused. This is what Les does. And at the end of it all, someone is either praising or apologizing to Les.
It’s kind of scary how good Les is at this game. He is a masterful manipulator of others.
God dammit, that is one excellent spot-on analysis. Narcissism is a Cluster B personality disorder, and shares a lot of traits with other maladaptive patterns of behavior in that category. Manipulation, abusiveness, a lack of empathy, a sense of entitlement and self-importance, arrogance, a willingness to exploit others and a need for admiration are all behaviors that are exhibited by anti-social/sociopaths and histrionics.
I still don’t get WHY this story has to be made? If Hollywood was going to do one of these “wife dies young” movies, why not do Patton Oswalt, a story that people would actually pay money to see in a film. Just watch “Terms of Endearment” and call it a day Cass.
How this might have worked:
1. Les unintentionally scuttles all the previous meetings by saying something insanely stupid at precisely the wrong moment (easy to imagine since it describes his every utterance).
2. Prior to this meeting, Mason tells Les, “This time, let me do the talking.”
3. After Cassidy tells Les she’s sorry, there is a panel of just Les following Mason’s orders, sitting silently for several seconds with a look of… ennui?… scorn?… gas? (help me out here, Ayers) before Mason says his line in the final panel.
On second thought, let’s try it this way:
1. “Funky Winkerbean” is cancelled in favor of re-running old Segar “Thimble Theater” strips of Popeye battling the Sea Hag.
Yeah, that works.
1. Mr. “I’ve done a thousand pitch meetings!” strikes again like Batman doing a stealth ambush on some unsuspecting goons…
1a. Out of all the dickish things he’s done, Masone Freaking Jarre saying one sentence and turning over the presentation to Les is going to the hall of fame…
2. SHE ALREADY KNOWS WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT, FUCKFACE! SHE WANTS A DETAILED PLAN ON HOW EXACTLY YOU PLAN TO MAKE IT INTO A COMPELLING MOVIE!!
3. Did this crazy lady just ask for an “elevator pitch” at a business lunch?
Masonne is a total idiot, but where do you get that she’s familiar at all with Less’s overworked screenplay? If she’s asking for a 20-30 second pitch, it’s because she wants the concept presented in a concise manner, not because she wants a writer and an front-of-camera actor to tell her how they plan to make a compelling film. She’s a producer – that’s her job, not theirs.
Well, it was a moderately successful book and I’d thought that a Hollywood exec would have at least googled the book and Les Moore before going into a meeting with him…
LOL I assure you Les hasn’t written the first page of that screenplay yet
He still has the original script he wrote for CME.
Les will get the production cancelled, because of course he will.
Instead of beating him to a pulp, Mason will smirk ruefully and say something like, “I understand, Les. It was hard enough to lose Lisa the first time–”
(Panel ellipsis)
“–losing her a second time [to commercial considerations] is two too many.”
Ah, the Funkyverse, where the first person in goodness-knows-how-long to express some amount of genuine sympathy upon hearing the story behind “Lisa’s Story” is meant with stone-faced…what is that on Les’s punim? Melancholy? Anger? Sullen Resignation? Obdurate Contrariness? A gassy stomach from too much sparkling water?
Seriously, Masonne should just leave him sitting there at the Marmont and staring pitching “My New Dog Pookie” instead. At least then he’d had an excuse when his partner peed on the carpet.
Now I’m wondering if the gag here is going to be that Les was stunned into silence by a Hollywood showbiz type being mannerly and sympathetic. The joke will be that Cassidy is the “opposite” of the rest of those Hollywood scumbags who seek to peddle his cancer story in strange faraway lands, which of course will leave Les confused, uncertain and deeply conflicted.
We’re obviously going for the nuclear option of being stupid: Les assuming that Cassidy’s sympathy is fake because she never met Saint Dead Lisa.
I’m always blown away that you even get those fucking stupid “L”s right. *chef kiss*
The artwork continues to follow the writing, in that both get progressively worse. Scribble drivel.
“It’s how Les lost his young wife.”
“Did he look behind the sofa.?”
Seriously Les’ aggressive and needy display of his suffering and grief coupled with his angry insistence on everyone feeling sorry for him some twenty years after his wife’s death is very much in the running for the most hateful thing about him. It’s a selfish childishness that destroys any sympathy a reader might have for him. After a certain age you come into contact with grief. I’ve lost both my parents over the years and while there are times the pain can come zooming back like it never left, I’ve moved on and prefer to remember their lives rather than their deaths and I don’t go around demanding sympathy because I’m an orphan,.
Les can go die in a fire.
My parents died when I was in my teens (my mum from cancer) and yes, the pain comes back hard some times, but that loss is not the only thing that has happened in my life. Les has diligently made his loss the only thing that ever happened in his life.
Oh, you know who else lost someone important when Lisa died?
Her daughter.
Darrin (is that his name?) has become head altar-boy at the shrine of Dead Saint Lisa, but does Summer even get a mention in the Sacred Book?
I’m telling you, that seemingly throwaway week where Summer said she was changing her major to Creative Writing is going to lead to her getting on the Dead Lisa Gravy Train just as Darin has already.
Cassidy’s long face has been the most consistently drawn character in this strip. So I wonder did Mr. Ed mount Carol Post in the stable back in ’62?