Don’t know if any conversation has taken place between yesterday’s strip and today’s. I just can’t imagine dour Les being the one to introduce himself and start a conversation. Anyway, somehow the Mauve Queen has somehow deduced Les’ identity; perhaps from the dickish, passive aggressive way he ordered that salad. As a perpetual book-touring author, Les is accustomed to answering questions about his life and his work (usually in a snotty manner), but the weird “first marriage” query even throws him.
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Son of Stuck Funky · The web's premiere source for Funky Winkerbean snark
Son of Stuck Funky 
“…that’s always the one where the awards are!”
Oh, I think I get it. You see, Hollywood is an amoral den full of cads and whores thus marriage doesn’t mean quite as much there, as everyone’s gonna do it half a dozen times anyhow. Har, har. The third panel should have just been a silent strip, it would have been much funnier that way.
I don’t know what universe Queen Mauve has been living in, but it sure ain’t the Batiukverse. Nothing much at all was special about the first marriages of Funky, Cindy, Holly, Cayla, Linda, Susan, Wally, Lefty, or Rachel. Alcoholism and divorce, divorce and age discrimination, divorce plus kid, presumed divorce and pursuit of Les (ick), presumed divorce plus kid, divorce and pursuit of Les (double ick), considered MIA for a decade, widowed-but-not-really with two kids plus DSH, presumed divorced with kid.
Les-Lisa was the only first marriage that this strange world ever found to be “special”…
I thought Princess Obvious was implying that everyone’s first marriage is special, therefore there is nothing special about Lisa’s Story.
For Cayla, it’s going to be the second marriage that’s special. Or at least maybe the marriage that doesn’t her into fetal position while mumbling “Someone save me.”
Or third. I’ve lost track.
Ya know, I never thought about what an insult this is to Cayla.
Both in real life and in this strip’s universe, the third book in the Lisa trilogy, The Last Leaf, has Cayla’s silhouette on the cover and much of it is about her and Les’ relationship. The book is subtitled “Lisa’s Story Concludes”…
I feel that this cannot be stressed enough.
Cayla was created so Les could “get over” Lisa, only he never did. In fact, it actually escalated. There was that brief period after they got married where Lisa kind of faded there for a while but she’s back with a vengeance now.
“Lisa: Back With A Vengeance” would make a splendidly mediocre horror film. She died while taping her final message into a cursed videocam, and now she’s doomed to micromanage the lives of her victims. And she’s as good at it as she was at looking after her own health.
Or maybe, like “The Ring”, everyone who watches Lisa’s last videotape suddenly gets cancer and dies.
I’m sure Cayha’s* sleeping with John Howard. First, because she’s a person with needs, and second, plausible deniability.
*That’s the way it’s written. In the Cancerdeathville tongue.
Lisa will appear as a an apparition to approvingly stand with Les at the Oscars, then the final curtain falls on FW.
“You know, Queenie, you’re absolutely right! After all, it’s all because of Dead St. Lisa and her premature death that I’ve become an acclaimed author and am sitting here in at a Hollywood studio food truck eating chickenless chicken salad! Why, I can’t even remember my second wife’s name! Let’s see…Cora? Koko? Kaylee? And didn’t she have a very deep tan once?”
What’s genuinely hilarious about this is that Batiuk surely means this as “haha, Hollywood types get remarried and don’t value marriage”, but Cayla is literally Les’s Lisa-worship-enabling and hot-chocolate-providing accessory and nothing else. Yes, Lisa was the special marriage for Les, and Cayla most definitely is not.
Double entendre on hot chocolate?
This brilliant insight wins Les over and he wants her to play Lisa. Which means, what? A Sidewinder Sunday where Les pictures himself as Daffy O. Seltzerwater, discovering Vivian Loon? Or maybe Svengali commanding Trilby. Or even Les Moore handing a bent nail to Mason Jarr, thereby sparking his rise to stardom. Yeah, that’s the ticket. It would mean Batiuk is recycling even more of the “Dead Lisa: Take One: arc.
I am going to give Batiuk exactly one winner point here for some nuanced layers to today’s joke. Having this presumably multiple times divorcee espousing the ‘specialness’ of the first marriage as a commentary on Hollywood celebrities, all the while dressed in in a Tudor era Gable Hood Headdress commonly associated with paintings of Catherine of Aragon.
The first of the six wives of King Henry VIII.
Thanks, I knew that headdress looked familiar, couldn’t place it.
The Six Dead Wives of Les the 1.
Catherine of Aragon. Dead Saint Lisa. Either way, the ending of their marriages catapulted their husbands to religious leadership.
Only one of them was portrayed musically by Rick Wakeman, though.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=aDuBhDzjYyI&feature=share
I think Wakeman’s “Six Wives of Henry VIII” is even more pretentious than ELP’s “Works”, if that’s even possible. 70s overblown pro-rock rules!
I know! On YouTube there’s this wonderful young Finnish flautist, Heline, who’s recently discovered progrock. I recommend you see her commenting on Ian Anderson.
Gotta give Ayres credit…he’s really nailing it, in terms of drawing Les so that he comes off like a complete jerk. Look at Les’ slumped posture as he checks his phone in panel 1, barely showing any interest in the person trying to have a conversation with him. Batiuk’s dialogue *could* be paired with the body language of “Uh-huh, I’m touched by your flattery and genuinely pleased that you’re aware of my project … and you know what? Talking with you about it might be pleasant.” But, no! Ayers knows this character, and totally gets it — when the dialogue isn’t making it clear Les is a dull, sullen drag, Ayers is able to step up and represent that sense of smug self-absorption in the drawings.
Then look at the veiled hostility in panel two, where it’s clear Les is REALLY ANNOYED at being interrupted in his waiting-for-salad-and-randomly-staring-at-his-phone activities. His only word of dialogue is a positive affirmation, but the drawing makes it clear Les is a soul-sucking miseryguts.
And panel three? With that look of “why does this creature keep blathering on, making obvious points — oh wait, I agree with that one, I guess”? Truly outstanding.
Les reminds me of Joffrey Baratheon, in the TV show. He could sit in a chair in a way that made people hate him. His posture just oozed malevolence. Les has the same quality, except his posture oozes indifference and condescension. But it’s just as visible.
Someone else pointed out to me the terrifying possibility that this random renfaire lady will be Les’ choice to play St. Lisa, and today I can see why. She’s already kissing his ass and spouting bullshit about how Les’ first marriage is the most special thing ever.
It’s going to be absolutely infuriating if this comes true, and Les whines at Mason until he gets what he wants. Especially because this makes the whole debacle about Mason trying to trick Les into accept Marianne Winters for the role of Cancerwife even more pointless and time-wasting than it already has been.
She’s an inane jerk with a record for disastrous marriages and a penchant for spouting cheerful gibberish. Of course Les is going to see his beloved Lisa in her.
Lisa came up with pious nonsense like that too. Lisa’s leading export was pious nonsense like that. Les will insist that Pious Nonsense Dispenser play Lisa.
Both my parents were previously married. My mother’s first husband was abusive, and my father’s first marriage was contentious from the start. They later found each other and stayed happily married for 38 years (until his death) and provided a very loving, stable family for my siblings and I.
So no, Tom Batiuk, the first marriage was not the special one, you goddamned hack. I find the idea insulting to my very existence.
It doesn’t even make sense in the sick little world you’ve created. Cayla does nothing but love, support, and indulge Les while he ignores her and concerns himself with Dead Lisa, but she’s not the special one. Holly and Funky are the only couple that seem to like each other at all. As was noted above, Westview is full of unhappy first marriages. But it’s all about Les, isn’t it?
Cayla is a Saint, that’s for sure.
Cayla is a plot contrivance. She was created to be one of multiple romantic rivals, to show off Les’ virility, and to win Tom Batiuk an award for depicting an interracial marriage. Her only remaining purpose is so Les has someone to talk about Lisa with, because Lisa Lisa Lisa Lisa Lisa. That’s it. She has no needs, desires, or personality.
I would call Cayla a Stepford wife, but she’s something worse than that. She was custom built to indulge Les’ sick, needy fixation on his dead wife.
I can believe that Cayla is a saint. She’s as good as dead, which is a requirement for sainthood.
“That’s always the special one,” says every divorced person never.
Indeed! My first marriage was so special, that when it ended, I’d never do it again!
Oh, you’re Richard Ramirez? The first kill is always special.
Things I do not believe about this strip (and previous):
That young woman is in full Tudor costume, which means she has been to wardrobe and possibly makeup. There is no way this is her breakfast, at best it is her coffee break or likelier her lunch.
She is an actress, who has to continue to fit into said costume, including corsetting. There is no way she is having carbs. She should be the one having a salad.
She lives in California. There is no way she would think a vegetarian or vegan lunch is anything to comment on.
Why isn’t she getting her snack and coffee from craft services? Just think, Mr Batiuk, you could use the jargon ‘the crafty’ for the craft services table, which I just learned from the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article.
I’m going to cast my vote against her (or anyone else) being Les’s choice for The True Lisa. I think we’re just going to be stuck for the whole filming arc with Les’s divine discontent that no one living can truly portray the perfect woman he has built up in his memory so thoroughly that he probably wouldn’t recognize the real Lisa if he saw her on the street.
So Les Freaking Moore can get recognized in Hollywood while Masone Jarre can’t get recognized anywhere? Got it….