Oh, yay. Another sideways strip. If your comics are so awkwardly wordy that they have to be turned sideways to fit in all the dialogue, maybe you’re doing something wrong. Or maybe visual storytelling isn’t for you.
What Lisa-related writing do you think Les is working on while he sits there silently while Cayla literally praises his greatness and showers him with kisses? That is one awkwardly clunky line Cayla is reading. I wonder if this was one of those situations where Les won because nobody else bothered to enter.
I have a feeling that Batiuk tells himself “You deserved to win” every day, when he thinks about the Pulitzer. I can see how he could be that deluded, given that he can spew out garbage like last week’s arc and still get it published and somehow get interviewed in major newspapers like he’s an Artist.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Les deserves nothing for writing such drivel.
Batiuk deserves nothing for writing such drivel.
“Of course I deserved to win! Now where’s my hot chocolate?”
This from the writer who had no problems jerking off to the fires going on in California to set up for more Dead Saint Lisa worship. It was great reading that drek as I watched the sky turn orange.
Why is this sideways? No other way to fit the excessive text? Or did they want to cut down on the number of drawings?
Must be Ayers charging Todd by the panel.
LOL sure Cayla, sure. “If only everyone was kind and respectful of one another…”, yeah, that would be great. Sigh.
Les didn’t win first place. He was runner-up to “USA A-OK” by Truong Van Dinh.
That was a great Simpsons episode. There was so much going in that story. What’s going on here? Les is a great writer. Les needs his ego stroked. Les deserved to win, despite a writing sample that is powerful evidence to the contrary.
The essays in “Lisa Goes To Washington” were all horribly cliched too, but that was the joke. It made fun of the culture around these childhood contests, the kind of people who participated in them, and that the winners weren’t all that exceptional. Funky Winkerbean seems to be trying to convince us, no, this is great writing. Bask in Les’ genius for a moment. Suffer with him as he imagines the $500 savings bond or whatever lame prize he will never win.
So, if memory serves me right, over the last two months or so we’ve come face to face with the Wildfire Monster, the Needless Jealousy Monster, the Heartless Government Immigration Department Monster, and Pizza Monster Meets Mr. Monster. It only makes sense, then, that–to give his audience a bit of a palate cleanser–Battyuk would offer a return to the home life of the Bearded, Bespectacled, Needs to Constantly be Praised Monster.
Seriously, “America is a country where people shouldn’t have to prove…” et cetera, et cetera? That wasn’t even a junior high-worthy mashing of cliches, let alone high school. I’m amazed Les won any sort of prize bigger than a $15 gift certificate to the downtown Westview Woolworth’s (ask your parents, kids).
And what is this Election Day Eve paean to the Land of the Free supposed to be, anyway? A prelude to tomorrow’s single-panel strip when Les proudly displays the exclusive “I Voted” sticker that the nice old lady awarded him at the polling place, to the awe and admiration of Cayla (who’s never been told about the passing of the 19th Amendment)?
Your entry makes me think. Didn’t we used to celebrate prose lifting our collective experience in the United States instead of highlighting that which degrades?
I know the irony of posting that here, given how we collectively degrade FW, but I think it still stands.
We did, and we still do, but this ain’t it. Face it, Les’ (and TB’s) trite compilation of bromides wasn’t as heartfelt as James Stewart’s filibuster speech in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” as eye-opening as Jeff Daniels’ “America’s not the greatest country in the world” tirade in the pilot for “The Newsroom,” or as hip as Green Arrow’s jeremiad in issue 76 of the “Green Lantern” comic book in the early ’70s. If you’re waiting on Battyuk for uplifting prose, you’d better find a comfortable tree to rest under…like that one over where Vladimir and Estragon are camped out.
And Les be honest (thanks Ed for the pun), Les doesn’t seem accepting of others. He expects the world to see things exactly as he does and he expects to get his way 100% of the time. That is not liberty, that is not freedom. It is Batty level BS.
This would have been good for Cayla to being to Les when he was being hyper-judgmental about all those actresses who were unfit to play his precious Lisa. “See what you wrote, Les? ‘People shouldn’t have to prove they deserve respect.’ Even if you don’t think these women are right to play Lisa, you could be less of an asshole about it.”
Damn, that office roof is so high you could berth an actual zeppelin in there, and still have room for that word-zeppelin!
Oh boy, more Lesturbation. Just what this strip needed,
It may have been deserved to win the sad little contest it entered, but it isn’t worth a plug nickel on “Fleabay”…
That one is actually kind of funny. She’s only making this grand sentimental gesture because her attempt to make a quick buck flopped. Decent gag.
And for SoSF readers, there’s also the schadenfreude of seeing Les’s work fail to attract interest on the open market (as opposed to the intended subtext of “Les is tragically underappreciated”).
Also, Les is the butt of the joke. That never happens anymore, does it? No, Les and his precious writing must be treated with the utmost reverence at all times.
The blue algae in Les’s hair is spreading to his scalp.
I thought that was Cayla infecting Les with Covid-19
Why is Cayla rifling through the attic? Where did she find this newspaper clipping? Did she spend all her time trying to find a smoking gun while Les was avoiding the smoke in LA?
I’d love to know what else Les has packed away, besides bodies…
I find it impossible to believe that Les won something, and every single person in town is not completely aware of all the details.
Setting aside this dreck, who’s in the masthead?
You’ll have to stay tuned until Sunday. And even then we still might not know.
Any chance of flipping the speech bubble to Pete?
Haiku of the Day:
Author to readers:
Les deserves more than he gets.
I don’t mean hate mail.
If Les deserved to win, why is Cayla holding a newspaper that says “WINNER?”
I think she’s saying that his win was deserved. Not that he lost, but should have won (the way Batiuk thinks of himself).
Hmm, I didn’t think of it that way. So Les doesn’t need consolation for a writing contest he thinks he should have won in high school; he needs further praise for a writing contest he did win in high school. With that dreadful sentence. I’m not sure which is worse.
Maybe he won at the local level, but lost at the national level?
Or maybe you’re Francesco Marciuliano.
“No more sideways panels” would be a great rule for an editor to impose on this strip. If you can’t tell the story without rotating it 90 degrees, you need to find a better way to tell it, or scrap it. It’s not even being used for effect, to show something tall; it’s just a crutch to cram in word zeppelins. It enables bad writing, and for that reason alone it should be stopped.
Note that this rule also puts an end to the Sunday comic book covers.