Les’ yellow shirt – Page 15 – Son of Stuck Funky

From Here to Punchternity

Poor Cayla. Doomed forever to live in Lisa’s shadow. Of course, she brought it on herself so it’s difficult to feel any sympathy when Les realizes, “Hey, this might get expensive, and she’s not Lisa, so why did I even bother telling her I’d take her overseas. I’ll buy her dinner somewhere. At the Paris Bar-B-Que & Bar-B-Beer-o-Rama in nearby Flungdown, Ohio. And I’ll pretend it’s Paris, France, and she’ll be just floored by how clever I am. She’s already happy with everything I do, so even if I instead spend the Beer-O-Rama’s five bucks on framing a Lisa picture, she’ll smile in delight.

“And if she insists on China–ha, like she’d insist on anything–I’ll take her to the Golden China Dump in Wastelife, Ohio and she’ll think I’m double clever. She always does.”

My brother went to China a couple of years ago, and it’s not the sort of trip a cheapskate Wetviewian would undertake. According to my brother, you’d be wise to go first class, because you can develop some severe health problems in a cramped lower-class seat. Although, come to think of it, if Cayla got severe health problems…

Ahem.

So, I went to Priceline (because Captain Kirk is cool), plugged in my nearest airport, put in Hong Kong as the destination and selected the dates of November 12 – 18. (I think Les’ anniversary is around that time. Like Les himself, I can’t remember.) The result–

Whoa. Let’s try something a little more reasonable. I plugged in my numbers for a late-August, early-September trip to Beijing.

Still up there in “Yikes!” territory for a Language Arts teacher who doesn’t make a lot of money (as the teachers continuously point out). Keep in mind, in both cases that’s per person, so Les is going to be out anywhere from $25 to $16 grand*. This is a guy who wouldn’t bother to warn his first wife that she might die–and he’s going to spend that much money on Cayla? Somehow I think the excuses will come a’runnin’ and Cayla will meekly accept them, now that she understands that she’s worthless. (Sure seems like Les has been far more damaging than her old typing teacher could ever hope to be.)

Observe that she’s just now moving next to Les on the porch swing, now that Darin has left. My assumption is that she was afraid she might distract attention away from Les, and that would never do. Cayla is symptomatic of some kind of syndrome, that’s for sure. I think it’s Lack of Pulitzer Nomination Syndrome, and I hear it’s pretty wearisome.

*Some might suggest that Les’ publishers would foot the bill. In the real world, an author who had deliberately sabotaged a movie adaptation of his own work would be lucky to get a second book, and he’d be flung out a window if he asked for a free trip to China. In the fantasy world of Westview, they’d not only foot the bill, they’d make sure it was national television news. I don’t feel bound by Tom Batiuk’s logic, however…one of the main reasons this strip consistently fails to impress.

Punch Me to the Moon

Link to today’s strip

Yeah–that sounds exactly like the way publishing must work. Let’s take a book that’s already completed and put it aside for a book that’s barely begun, and might take (agonized) years to finish. In the meantime, the folks who put literally moments into illustrating the first book will wait patiently to be paid. This is as close to real as it gets, folks! After all, if top-of-the-bestseller-lists author Les Moore isn’t handled properly, and given all the time he wants to mediocretize, he might skip to another vanity press! Heavens!

Notice how in just one day, the focus has switched from Darin’s Californian Adventure back to Lisa. That Pulitzer nomination must be the bitterest flavor Tom Batiuk has ever tasted. Notice, too, that Cayla shows up just now so she can be further humiliated and placed at the back of the bus so Lisa can ride up front. I find it very difficult to feel sympathy for her, however, as this is a bus she chose when she fought to get Les as a prize.

I take it back. The failure of the Pulitzer committee to notice that Tom Batiuk had married his most wondrous character ever to a black woman–that taste must be bitterest of all.

Empunchable You

Link to today’s strip.

Greetings, BChasm back for another stretch driving the Funky Phantom. In today’s episode, the most notable thing is another amazingly punchable face by Les in panel three. It’s so punchable, in fact, that it looks as if Tom Batiuk beat us all to the punch (so to speak) and just kept punching. I’ve never seen a visage as scrambled as that, outside of Beetle Bailey after Sarge scrunches him to the ground.

As to the “content,” why would Darin ask Les about his Hollywood experience? I’m going to assume for the sake of argument that Darin actually wants to work on this movie, and to see it through to completion, thus possibly getting a good-paying job. Les, you’ll recall, worked tirelessly to torpedo his movie and make certain that Hollywood would never call him again. It’s hard to think of a greater example of non-success, or, to give it its proper name, failure. Unless Darin is planning on doing the exact opposite of everything Les says, he’s doomed.

The feeling on my part is that the movie won’t be made anyway. Given the absolute sacredness with which comic books are viewed in this strip, coupled with how Evil Hollywood always wants to alter the purity of the material it has been given, means that all the cast and crew will resign en masse in order to keep from sullying the wonder that is Starbuck Jones. If it doesn’t come from Les, it’s not allowed to happen.

By the way, I think I’ve figured out what it is that I dislike most about the art in this strip as it appears throughout Act III. It’s not the smirks, it’s the half-lidded eyes, the ones that seem to be carrying on their own conversation. “You know, right?” “Of course I know. And you know, too.” It’s that unspoken superiority to all things that is totally unearned. It makes me want to punch Les all the more, although all the characters do it.

The War of the Time Pools

No one would have believed in the early years of the twenty-first century that Westview was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Les’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as pizza mongers busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

Yet across the gulf of the internet, minds that are to Les’s mind as his is to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded today’s strip with beady eyes, and slowly and surely picked at nits.

Here ends my snark stint,
So off will I slink.
Coming up next:
Billy the Skink!

Lunch’s Unexpected Return

Link to today’s strip.

When I said yesterday, “It gets worse,” you probably thought, “How can it?” Well, now you know.

Those of you with weak stomachs may want to stop with Les’ first dialogue balloon, in which Les gets someone else to do his work, again, this time quadrupling his own workload to nothing. Has Les ever done anything? It sure seems all he does is complain when things are expected of him, and then he moans and weeps until someone else does all the work. Then he whines about how hard his life is, and, well, you know the rest.

If you’re brave enough to tackle the rest of the strip, let’s press on. Les has never gotten over the loss of his first wife, and everyone, simply everyone, is completely aware of this and does whatever they can, at all times, to help him heal. Because no one else in this world has ever lost a loved one. No one else has ever suffered. No one else bears the weight of the world like Les Moore. (It’s no wonder that someone like Wally, who has suffered far more than Les, is a character the strip treats with thinly-veiled contempt.)

Lest you think me callous, I do understand that losing a loved one is a lifelong thing, and that those who’ve left us will always be in our memories. But looking at Les’ sad, smashable face in panel two, you’d hardly think this was a guy who eventually married another woman, then wrote a comic book about how he’d found new love with his new wife.

Mary Sue’s phrase in panel two seems off to me–if I was sympathetic to Les, I’d say he still loves Lisa, and that’s why he remembers. Oh well, Mary Sue is, after all, a girl, and they’re not much good for anything in this world, are they. I’m surprised we didn’t get a third panel of Les patting her on the head and saying “Thank you for trying.”

There’s a phrase that describes Les Moore perfectly. That phrase is “wallowing in self-pity.” It’s the sort of thing that a normal person does for a time–possibly a long time–but then picks himself up and moves on.

But not Les Moore. He’s going to make sure you’re always aware of him, and through this awareness, he’s going to make you suffer.

Oh, before I forget, when I said it “gets worse” yesterday, I left out one thing–it gets even worse tomorrow.