Welcome back from what I hope for you was a wonderful, long holiday weekend. Also back at work this Monday is Les Moore, after a weekend in Hollywood that started back in June. Les’ harrowing experience during the wildfires there have left him a little bit on edge: so triggered is he by the loud PA announcement that the sheaf of blank paper he was holding flies from his tiny hands. Easy to see why Mason wants to make a movie about this hero. Even Logan, the one being summoned by this booming voice, is more calm. Harder to gauge the reaction of the anono-kid in the red shirt, who is likely high AF and whose stage direction for this scene is “(looks on).” Tuesday: Logan pauses in the doorway and, without even getting Les’ Spinal Tap reference, blankly inquires of Mr. Moore, “Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?”
Son of Stuck Funky 
Logan Church…that’s either a good-hit no-glove fourth outfielder or a hard-hitting free safety with nagging hamstring issues. “And Logan Church’s throw misses the cutoff man”…”that’s Logan Church limping toward the sideline, they can ill afford to lose him again”. Nice Spinal Tap reference, he probably loved the scene where they get lost backstage in Ohio, as it’s no doubt happened to him at many a convention center.
Here’s a random FW thought. As we all know he writes FW a year in advance. I’ve always believed he most likely has the following year finished by January. Thus if I’m correct he wrote the 2021 strips in January 2020, which means it was finished before the pandemic broke, which means FW will probably address the pandemic in 2022, when (ideally) it’s old news by that point. Which is totally in character for BatHam.
Another thought: it’s pretty clear that he’s not re-visiting the cancer movie arc again in 2020, which puts FW readers in the worst possible position, as a lengthy Les arc is 100% inevitable. And it could drop at any time. January, April, July, October, you just don’t know. But it’s gonna happen. And then it’s never going to end.
Who is the middle aged stoner with a receding hairline standing behind Les? He has ears more crooked than Stephen Colbert.
It looks like a prematurely balding Jughead Jones.
Oh, and I love his “my soul is dead” expression. He looks like he just got to Westview, bought a school spirit t-shirt to fit in like he would have at Riverdale, but has already adopted the local custom of fatalistic ennui. His expression says “This place sucks. Why’d my parents have to separate? All I wanted to do was eat hamburgers and hang out with my friends. I died my hair blue and no one even noticed. Why doesn’t this town have pot?
So what’s going to be the joke substitute here? What will Batiuk cook up with his box of Humor Helper? “Ah, Special Agent double-oh-nothing,” says the principal. “Can you destroy subject LM?”
“Of course!” she says. “With Logan Church on the job, he doesn’t have a prayer!”
Why is Les only ever shown running the school news program? It seems like about the same time Cindy became a recurring character, Les stopped having anything to do with his actual job of teaching English, and is now just teaching journalism, for some reason.
I wonder if Logan has a brother “Skip,” as in “Skip Church.” Naw, too clever.
The artwork layout is so inept here, that it looks like Logan Church is the woman walking through the door, and Less is assuming, or knows, that’s Logan Church. You see, I need to mention Logan Church a lot, so you don’t miss the name Logan Church, because tomorrow, Less will say to Not-Lisa, “did you hear Logan Church’s name over the loudspeaker? Can they make Logan Church’s name any louder? they should turn it down from eleven to ten.” Then crack a wry smirk, Not-Lisa will roll her eyes and ask: “Hey, what was that name again?” smirk, smirk, wink, wink, and BatHack will call it love.
Les is not turtley enough for the Turtle Club in panel 1.
Two questions:
With the nod to Star Trek, what fatal calamity befalls the “red shirt guy”?
What “very special” arc are we embarking on this week? This strip is strongly telegraphing that vibr.
“vibe”
Ah, back to Westview High: where all the students are drawn to look as though they’re in their early thirties, and where a tossed-off reference to a line from a 36-year-old movie is our daily allotment of “humor.” How will the rest of this latest Les arc play out? Will our hero put a potato in a car’s tailpipe a la “Beverly Hills Cop”? Will the school’s winter dance be cancelled in a salute to “Footloose”? Will Adeela deliver a pizza after midnight to Les and Cayla, forcing them to save the town from “Gremlins”? Or will a remorseless android killing machine from the future show to kill kill everyone and put us out of our misery? I can hardly wait.
So a character we’ve never heard of before is being summoned to the office? I wonder what terrible news they’re going to receive, and why I should care.
My apologies, I ran a search and we have met Logan Church before. She’s the one who used to be white.
LOL WHUT
So she’s the one who’s been draining the melanin from Not-Lisa Moore!
Oh look, another zero-talent character who’s inexplicably a mainstream media success. Does anyone in Westview NOT have a publishing deal? Besides Pam, who doesn’t have one so she can be bitter about it despite never seeming unhappy before?
To be fair, I do recall that other strips have had problems with the syndicate colourists ignoring and/or not understanding that new characters are not always meant to be Not White. The ambitious news-anchor-turned-tabloid-monger in Judge Parker was also pale-skinned for a few weeks back when that strip changed hands.
It was just easier to notice in JP because the character would go on to have actual storylines, an actual connection to the other characters, and to appear more than twice a year.
This strip, remarkably, has characters going both ways. Before Logan Church we had Frankie’s producer partner Lenny Grant, who in week 1 looked like this:
And in week 2 looked like this:
In between there was a TB-colored (presumably) Sunday strip that appears to give us a rare glimpse of Lenny’s skin color in transition:
I’m drivng myself to madness by trying to parse “Lenny Gant” as a pun. Please send help
Damn, they did the exact same thing three years ago back when I still used to fuck around with JP and the Curmudgeon website… Unless we’re talking about the same character which would make it even more unforgivable
Wait a minute… Since when did ABC News and their infinite supply of Disney money need to “pick up” the content some 15-year-old girl’s blog?
And what the fuck does “pick up” mean? Did they advertise it? Link to it in one of their stories? Buy it out?
I’m going to guess that Logan has Cancer Squared, and that Les will save the day by discovering that only the power of ROCK can cure it. Progeria Student will be drafed into playing bass, because even at Westview, nobody wants to be the bass player.
I’m also going to guess that the students actually seem to get the reference this time around because Les just lets them watch movies instead of learn English/Literature/Journalism/Comics/Cancer.
Cowbell can cure it https://youtu.be/tPh7OZew5oo
Yet another example, as if more were needed, that Batiuk just commits whatever occurs to him to paper. “Is this funny?” “Is this good?” and “Is this interesting?” are irrelevant questions, never to be asked
I still remain puzzled why Batiuk and now Ayers work so hard at making their child characters look so homely and unattractive. That’s a high school-aged boy in panel two, and he looks like a 45 year old whose life has been drained by a succubus. Everything about him is done to make him look ragged, ugly and beaten, from his terrible hairline to his pronounce eyebags to his slumped posture to his facial expression that gives one the impression that he never has had any hope that his life would be anything more than complete shit.
Well, I guess he did voluntarily choose a school activity that would put him under the tutelage of Les Fucking Moore. No wonder he looks like someone with Stage 4 cancer who never looked healthy in the first place.
Les’s work shirt was originally white. His feckless, scared personality has drenched it with nervous perspiration turning it pee pee yellow. Caucayla dares not mention to her hubby that it needs washing. I have a feeling that Mrs. Not Lisa has developed Stockholm syndrome.