What the f*ck is she talking about? Does she mean the movie itself, the book being translated into Spanish, the news that the movie won’t be shown anywhere, or what? For the time being I will assume she means how he “feels” about “Lisa’s Story” itself, because “Delicate Genius is deeply conflicted about sharing personal details of his life” is more or less the entire point of the “LS” arc, but given Batiuk’s uniquely non-linear “storytelling” style, who the hell really knows. She could be talking about the crab puffs or the ketamine she slipped into his drink or God only knows what.
And Cayla’s slow descent from “character” to “caricature” to “prop” continues unabated today, as BatNard couldn’t resist throwing in a touch of that patented “female = jealous” trope he enjoys so much. “GASP! She’s going into that room to talk to my HUSBAND…ALONE!!! I hope SEX isn’t involved!”. And while I’m braying on and on about shitty, poorly-developed female characters (again), there’s Marianne Winters, the beautiful twenty-something movie star with the small-town heart of gold, about to confide in her dear friend Les Moore, who didn’t even want her cast as Lisa in the first place. Luckily for her, she won him over with her pitch-perfect Lisa-isms thus immediately putting Les at ease to a point where he chose to allow himself to befriend her and not dismiss her as another cheap Hollywood phony like he initially assumed she was. Another believable and convincing female FW character and not at all indicative of far bigger and way weirder issues that are just too icky and disturbing to address at any length today.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I can almost see Cayla’s thought process here. “Wait a minute, where’s he go — is he leaving with her? Is he going to cheat on me? OHMIGOD YES YES YES YES YES. Allright, Cayla, don’t get excited. Bide your time. Give them a few minutes and then bust in. If they’re so much as hugging, that’s grounds for divorce, half his money, and no more Lisa. And any court on Earth would grant it. Oh, this is the big one. Gotta time this right.”
Oh, who am I kidding. It’ll be another wacky romantic mixup with no tension, no conflict, and no plot.
That’s good Marianne, because being able to imagine what Les is feeling is a sign that you are losing your humanity.
A prerequisite for a long career in Hollywood.
“Here, Les, let me show you the Easter egg I found in one of Lisa’s tapes. It will inspire you just like it inspired my performance as Lisa! And it’s all chocolatey!”
What could Marianne want to share with Les? Could it be:
A) “Les, I’m pregnant with your child.”
B) “Les, I’m pregnant with Masonne’s child.”
C) “Les, I just learned my estranged father, legendary Silver Age comics creator Phil Holt, is alive!”
D) “Les, I’m engaged to Zanzibar the Talking Murder Chimp and I want you to give me away at the wedding.”
E) “Les, I’m a method actress and I got so into playing Lisa I came down with my very own cancer. Please write a book about how much my struggle and eventual death affected you.”
Choice D, please. Marianne sees that he’s a changed chimp and just wants a second chance. It’s the feel-good story of the season!
No, he’s a Charger Chimp!
“E” sounds like something Masone would 100% totally do… Now I’m wondering why he didn’t just straight-up murder Cindye so he could truly know how it felt to lose a wife…
Where else is he going to find a woman who is as spineless, mindless and dependent as Cindy . . . . never mind, she’s there in P3 and she already has experience as a replacement wife.
Spoilers from the future: one of these is TRUE.
Hey, Marianne, let me help you out with what Les is feeling: Self-pity, a blinding hatred for you and every other human, a pathological yearning for rewards and other forms of grandiose recognition, and a soupçon of self-disgust.
“Seems to magnify how much you’re sharing with the world”? Boychik, NO ONE asked you to keep sharing your Lisaschmerz with ANYBODY! You’re the one who keeps writing books, going on signing tours and appearances, jetting out to La-La Land to watch your heroic struggle (oh, and Dead St. Lisa’s, too) become immortalized on celluloid, and apparently avoiding your lesson plans for your students. You even went to an old lady’s attic bookstore to keep pushing the Gospel of Lester.
In the meantime…Go, Cayla! Follow them outside! Pounce on them with a crazed look in your eyes and shout “A-HA! I KNEW IT!” at the top of your lungs. If you need tips, ask Cindy for advice. But you’re probably good; Marianne seems to bring it out in you dizzy dames.
The moldy old “jealous wife trope” at least made a *little* bit of sense with Cindye since she’s in her late 50s married to a star actor in his late 30s with his choice of any woman in the world… Nevermind the fact that Cindye was (and still is) hyper-obsessed with her physical beauty and filled with a secret doubt and self-loathing… It made ZERO fucking sense with that redhead hottie who thought her husband (Cory?) was running around with some frumpy unattractive Iraqi refugee (in full sight of all of his employees, no less)… And it makes even less fucking sense for Kayla to entertain even for a second the thought that any woman anywhere wouldn’t rivet their legs shut after hearing Les talk for 30 seconds…
I think Cindy’s jealousy makes the least sense, because of how it manifested itself. “Girl is jealous her boyfriend has to kiss another girl in the class play” is a high school problem. And even when I was that age, I knew kids who handled it better than Cindy does. When you marry an actor, you have to accept that their job requires them to perform love scenes with other people. It’s like marrying an accountant, and complaining they never have time for you on April 14. And after she yelled “cut” during an actual filming, she would have been thrown into Hollywood Boulevard.
True… I have no idea why Masone didn’t call off the wedding and cut her ass loose then and there (and at the bare minimum security should have thrown her out on the street). Because as I’d noted a thousand times, Cindye has enough emotional baggage to fill the Grand Canyon, she’s a good 15-20 years older, and Masone has his pick of any woman on the planet… And not only is it embarrassing to everyone on the set, it kills Marsone’s Q-rating and it should have been the lead story on Entertainment Tonight and TMZ and everywhere else… Nevermind the fact that real-life A-list celebrities have ended relationships for a hell of a lot less than that.
Mason should have given Cindy a restraining order, not an engagement ring. She more or less stalked him, even moving from Westview to Los Angeles to take that dubious “Buddyblog” job she suddenly didn’t need anymore. Cindy has more red flags than the 1980 Moscow Olympics. And in the juvenile, antiquated Funkyverse, this was supposed to be cute.
Don’t forget the riveting arc from last year (I think) where Durwood’s wife overheard him and Mopey Pete talking while she was in the Atomik “Bullpen” closet (that’s right; of the three of them, SHE was the one in the closet) and came out shrieking, convinced her hubby was cheating on her, only to learn he was talking about getting glasses. Is there a female FW character whom Battyuk hasn’t depicted in this manner?
Yes – Harriet. Is there any way anyone could believe she would care if she found out that Harry was fooling around with every one of the church choir ladies?
You’re thinking of Wally Winkerbean, Funky’s cousin (not his nephew). He’s married to Rachel, who hired Amicus Breef to defed Adeela.
Corky Winkerbean is Funky’s stepson. His romantic interest is Rocky Rhodes.
Correction: I meant to write “Cory Winkerbean.”
“A man ain’t got nothin’ if he ain’t got his name,” as Crackajack Jackson told the Hulk, so it should be given properly.
Oh give me a fucking break, Les. Lisa’s probably the first thing you mention to every person you meet. If sharing her story with the world was so much of a damn problem for you, you wouldn’t have published that stupid book.
This dipshit really does look for things to whine about. All the praise he’s gotten tonight and he’s still all sensitive and wounded and naked for all the world to see.
Sorry about that.
Yeah, this just keeps getting worse. And why does Marianne have hair like Becky?
Oh come on… You know there’s only only two generic templates for female characters in the Funkyverse — Medium-length bleached blonde, and Tomboy-ish short spiky raven black…
Sure seems that way…even in Crankshaft. I love what’s her names bowl haircut.
It’s the eternal paradox of Lisa’s Story. The things Les is too sensitive to talk about are exactly the things that would make such a book worthwhile to read. It is simultaneously the most powerful memoir of loss in the history of the written word, and a giant, banal, nothingburger about a very common tragedy.
No suspense here! no doubt Marianne will tell Less how playing Lisa in the movie changed her life, no more thoughts of suicide here. It’s all because of the magic of Less’ words. To think lives so empty that they look to such an idiot for inspiration. This comic is so mentally unhealthy in its presentation of life that it should contain a health warning.
PS: My theory about Cayla’s “jealousy”. It’s displaced anger at Lisa for ruining her marriage, and it’s the only safe way she can express her true feelings about her situation.
I have ZERO sympathy for Kayla at this point… Even if she didn’t know she’d always be the “third person” in her marriage when she first got hitched to Les, he has done nothing but reinforce that reality literally every hour of every day for the last 14-15 years…
At least now I know Kayla was invited out to Hollywood just to set up this “assumed adultery” storyline… Because all the other times Les came out to L.A. she’d been left at home…
Les’ proposal to Cayla was the Lisa bench during a conversation about Lisa , and it demanded that Cayla accept her position as second place to Lisa. So she knows what she signed up for.
But the real problem is the inherent sexism of the Funkyverse. No woman is allowed to turn down any marriage proposal, no matter how atrocious or half-assed it is, or which male member of Westview’s Grade D dating pool it came from.
And the “good girls” must always be nice and spineless, like the time Cayla let Les get away with calling her a macaque. They aren’t allowed to do anything worse than risk spending too much of Hubby’s hard-earned money.
Maybe she’s going to give up acting to study law?
1. Okay, this comic strip is about to go somewhere that’s either really dumb and anticlimactic to fluff Lester’s ego, or somewhere that’s really goddamned sick to make Lester jizz in his Wal-Mart slacks and start crying… But no matter what happens, I’m telling y’all right now that IF IT INVOLVES MARIANNE GETTING INTO HER “LISA CHARACTER” OR PUTTING ON THE COSTUME, I AM DONE WITH THIS FUCKING STRIP AND I AM CALLING THE FBI TO KICK DOWN TOM BATIUK’S DOOR… I AM NOT KIDDING
2. Is the wrap party still going on, or what? Seems like there’s only six people here…
3. For the love of god, please don’t have Marianne give Les a hug or whatever so she can be photographed by Darrin’s dad and be the top story on TMZ again… Because we’ve already had that stupid storyline…
IF IT INVOLVES MARIANNE GETTING INTO HER “LISA CHARACTER” OR PUTTING ON THE COSTUME
I would accept this, under one circumstance: she was dressing up as Lisa to seduce Les. Because that would be hilariously spot-on.
She would seduce him by lying on the floor like a corpse.
“The playground is open, Les.”
A murder/suicide killing Les would be awesome, definitely Pulitzer material
Marianne Winters: I just received my DNA results back from the internet website. It seems we’re second cousins. Please don’t brag to anyone that we slept together on the boat after the fire. 😱
Nah, way too complicated for Batty. I doubt ghost Lisa would have approved the hook-up anyway.
I’m sure the story will proceed as everyone predicts. Marianne will inform Les how playing Dead St. Lisa has transformed her life. She will thank him for allowing her to play the role, blah blah blah. Just as she gives Les a big hug and a peck on the cheek, Cayla will burst through the door. J’Accuse! The conflict will then be resolved in the lamest and most forgettable way possible. A 99% chance of smirks by Saturday
Batty will continue to smugly claim he’s a ‘storyteller’ and deposit the checks with a clear conscience. I think I need a Tom Batiuk stress doll too.
OR… WHAT IF St. Lisa secretly gave birth to twins and we discover Marianne is the Leia to Darrin’s Luke? That’s certainly dumb enough to work in the Funkyverse….
“The doctors never told you what happened to Lisa.”
“In the main, they did. They told me she was gone.”
“No. I am Lisa.”
“Oh.”
Evil Frankie: NOOOOOOO!!!!
Would that make Les ‘Darth Sidious’? Darth Hideous?
I almost posted that Marianne was going to inform Les she found out she’s Summer’s long-lost twin. Many readers have commented on the resemblance between the two. I scotched that idea because it’s hard enough imagining Les fathering one child, let alone two.
If Batty can use the old record mix-up ploy, so can I. The hospital mixed up the babies. Summer and Marianne are twins from an entirely different set of parents. Les and Lisa’s baby resembled the mutant baby from It’s Alive. Their baby is a vile creature who killed many doctors and nurses as it escaped the hospital. The baby needs to be destroyed, much like its father.
That would be a great and totally appropriate plot twist. Sadly, it won’t happen.
More boring/nauseating prediction: Marianne will thank Les for telling her that thing he told her on the boat, because it shaped her whole performance, and also thank him for the “privilege” of getting to play Lisa. We will still not be told what Les said on the boat, because Batiuk couldn’t come up with anything that improved on the vague suggestion of a meaningless mystery.
Oh please let the big reveal be that Lisa faked her death and that she’s waited all these years to plot her revenge against Les and that she’s enlisted Plantman’s aid. (Zero chance of that happening, but one can dream.)
Why not bring back John Darling? Jessica’s catchphrase could become “my father, John Darling, whom up until recently I thought was murdered”!
It might become as memorable as this “Due South” tag:
I first came to Chicago on the trail of my father’s killers, and for various reasons remained here a liaison to the Canadian consulate.