Tag: book

Les can speak his mind, but not on my time

How about a round of applause for Epicus Doomus, who went the extra-extra mile in covering three consecutive weeks of Funky madness? That’s four weeks more than doctors recommend. Your friend billytheskink here, hopefully (but probably not) prepared to tread water for two weeks right along with this strip as it tries to stay afloat until March 2022.

Alas, Sunday’s comic was an omen and Les Moore’s tour of contempt continues in today’s strip. Yet another person (one of Pete’s relatives, perhaps?) has been standing in line to meet the author of a book that they know nothing about? Skinny McBrowncoat has never heard of Les or the previously released Lisa’s Story book? I mean, that is believable, sure, but did he just see a line at the bookstore and decided to stand in it?

Panel two’s look over our dazed customer’s shoulder seems to confirm that this book is all text, not a graphic novel like it originally was going to be. I wonder if it was Les or his publisher that decided to stick all of Durwood’s artwork in the circular file.

Preludicrous

Had I known TB was going to gratuitously shill for his next collection of strips in today’s strip, I wouldn’t have plugged his Amazon pre-order page yesterday. Click the link above to the previous day’s post if you want to see it, I’m not linking it again.

So… Durwood first floated this whole “Prelude” idea to Les over a year-and-a-half ago. Les allegedly began working on it shortly thereafter, with his publisher delaying release of The Last Leaf until he could finish it so that they could be released together.  In fact, just last week Darin explicitly tells Les he wants to see what he has written so that he can start on the “illos” for the book.

But in today’s strip, Les is just NOW given the idea for the Prequel/Prelude book that he claimed to have started in mid-2015, a book it was definitely implied he was procrastinating on just LAST WEEK?!

I… I mean… Just… Just move on to the next story arc, please.

The Last Leaf, by the way, is going to be an actual thing. That means that, combined with Prelude and the already-published The Other Shoe, this trilogy of books that Durwood has proposed is going to be a real (expensive) thing too.

And to think I said I wasn’t gonna plug TB’s books today…

Where the Emphasis Goes

Link to today’s strip.

Bleah, more Harry Dinkle.  Becky no longer mentions the “volume three” part, as it no doubt made (potential) customers say, “Three volumes from that old shriveled husk?!  Why, he must be even more of a pompous windbag than he looks!  He must talk non-stop, when he’s not clutching a book with his teeth!”  Of course, even at one volume it’s still the story of a pompous windbag, so (like yesterday) I’m guessing from that stack that sales are not brisk.

I like thinking they’ve sold absolutely no books at all.  “I’d rather the whole school close down forever than buy that book.  That book is so awful that throwing it in the garbage is the highest critical praise it’ll get,” is probably the usual response.  Other responses:  “Sorry, I don’t have a table that has a short leg, and I don’t have a toddler who needs his booster chair augmented.”  “My birdcage is lined with quality newspaper, thank you very much.”  “How well does it work to get my fire started?  I thought so.”  Followed by SLAM!  SLAM!  SLAM! etc.

Hey, does this week’s story mean that Harry is now on a tour promoting his book?  He gets more and more like Les all the time!

Another thing I like is how the falling leaves look like Harry is surrounded by flies seeking his rotting, purulent flesh.

The best part of this one is imagining how Brad DeGroot from Luann is pronouncing his sentence.  “I thought you’d be selling a turkey,” with the words going down in pitch from “thought.”  In other words, “this is a very bad thing you want me to buy, and it isn’t even edible.  Its one use seems to be to neutralize the arms of that horrible old man you’re with, and I don’t have a horrible old man, so get lost before I shoot you with my 38 special and then burn your bodies in the yard and consider my Christmas wish has come true.”

Okay, maybe that last little bit wasn’t really implied in Brad’s sentence.   Much.  As the British say, “No ‘arm in tryin’.”