Les’ yellow shirt – Page 9 – Son of Stuck Funky

School’s Out Completely

Batiuk’s spent the last few weeks burning off a lot of one-shot gags. You’ve gotta admit, though, that even when they fall flat, you’ll take a half-dozen joke strips over say, a week of Funky exploring an abandoned house. Today’s comic continues in the gag-a-day vein, but Burchett continues to add welcome and pleasing visual details. Especially in that first panel: Cayla is positively coquettish, smiling to herself as she casually lets slip to Nate that hubby Les is going to be…preoccupied. And she’s totally getting through to Nate, too. Cut to a nice shot of the talking school building featuring non-hand lettering on the WHS message board, some nice shade from some leaves, and of course there be bricks.

That slow jam playing we could hear in the background abruptly switches to Yakety Sax! Here comes Les, haulin’ ass, knocking hapless students aside with his valise in his frenzy to get the hell away from there. Unless Les and his wife drive separate cars to work, poor Cayla’s going to need a ride home…

Think, Tank

Day Two on the job and Rick Burchett is tasked with introducing a new character, and Batiuk even gives this one a name! “Tank” resembles bully emeritus Wedgeman, with his imposing physique, blue-black hair, and freckles/blemishes. Les, acting like a real teacher for once, unhesitatingly offers Tank an opportunity to redeem his poor grade, but once again is stingingly slapped back to his senses, hard enough this time to make him affect a Jack Benny pose.

Les Quizérables

Hello SOSFers, billytheskink here to ponder the ponderous ponderings of this comic strip with you all for the next couple weeks.

Why does Garfield hate Mondays? He’s a cat, he doesn’t have a job. His owner doesn’t have a job that keeps him from making lasagna on Mondays (or a job at all, even… is Jon still supposed to be a cartoonist?). I guess Mondays are when Nermal shows up, but that happens on rare occasions and Nermal always sticks around for at least a week anyways, making whole weeks terrible.

I have just now realized that Garfield hates Mondays because he read today’s strip, and it is hard to blame him. I think I hate Mondays now too.

We have seen Les berate his students before (including just under a month ago, in fact), but this time he has decided to leave the classroom door wide open so passers by can hear him humiliate every single student he has been charged with teaching. You know, maybe this is TB’s attempt to bring a balanced perspective to this strip. He’s done an anti-bullying story arc, why not a pro-bullying one?

Let’s Go to the Tape

Link to today’s strip.

How many years has Les been teaching at Westview High? And yet, according to panel two, he still has to tape a paper sign to his window. You’d think the teachers would have little engraved signs on the doors or windows, but no, No One Will Escape…The Entapening. (This film has not yet been rated.)

Is Tom Batiuk on the payroll of the 3M company? That…actually, that wouldn’t surprise me.

As far as the actual content of the strip is concerned, I can’t make any sense out of it. He wants them to be prepared for the test, and that’s fine, but then he goes on into nonsense land.

Just as an experiment, I went back though this years strips and replaced his last panel dialogue with something else. With one exception, these are unaltered. The slightly altered one is first. I think they make just as little sense as the original, but are improvements nonetheless.

Harper Les

Link to today’s strip.

Greetings, folks, BChasm here, back behind the soundboard. Thank you, TFH, for a typically stellar performance–now I know what it was like, back when The Monkees followed their opening act, Jimi Hendrix, on to the stage.

The secret to being a good guest host is working with good material and bringing out something unique. The secret to being a great guest host is working with no material at all and coming up with something, which brings me to today’s piffle.

I guess it was about a year ago that Harper Lee published Go Set A Watchman, and I further guess that Tom Batiuk thought that would be suitable grist for his mill…somehow. I always assume that all of Les’ students are idiots, so I’ve learned nothing new about Amelia (whichever of the twins she is). But once again Les shows himself to be a colossal dick.

In my time in school, all the way through college, I never had a professor mock me by reading out one of my incorrect answers. And I fail to see what point Les is trying to make. If he thinks she’s not paying attention, a simple “Please see me after classes” written on the exam would suffice just fine. During which the teacher would discuss the student’s difficulties and make suggestions. You know, trying to help the student–something he’s supposed to be doing–rather than taking the opportunity to show what an ass he is.

So, I suspect Les’ after class meeting would start with some stupid wordplay and might finally get around to asking Amelia about her class performance. Then she’d respond to his question, “Gee, Mr. Moore, you’re so boring. You drone on and on about your dead wife when you’re not making these awful puns. I’m going back to Crankshaft.”

That might be a nice thing to be able to do, any other teacher would think. Somehow, though, I suspect Les finds it just fine in Westview, where all must celebrate his dickery.