Tag: Les

What’s a Hemingway?

Major props as always to Beckoning Chasm, and to David O, Epicus Doomus, and Oddnoc, for helping me keep the snark fires burning every day!

As the first autumn leaf drops, Les and Cayla pack up the old porch swing.  What is surely intended to be romantic small talk could be read as icy, dismissive sarcasm with the addition of some quotation marks:

I’m glad you’re home, “Hemingway”…I missed you while you were “doing your Hollywood thing.”

After all, Les’ ultimately doomed movie project once promised big bucks and dreams of stardom. Instead, he’s back in Ohio with nothing to show for his time in LaLa Land.

On a side note: every Sunday strip since August 3 has had these black borders around the panels…is Batiuk finally copping to how morbid and depressing his strip is?

Golden Years

Link to today’s strip.

Sunday’s strip is generally not available for preview, so here are a couple of thoughts until it goes live.  (I’m thinking it has been a while since we had a comic book “tribute,” myself.  I’m told, though, that we’ve got more Les on the way.)

For those of you who see the title and think David Bowie, well, here you go.

There’s been a lot of speculation here, especially during the last week, as to exactly what Tom Batiuk is up to.  We had six solid days of a “joke” that could have told itself in two, tops.  Why?

Well, I have a possible theory.  I think he wants that golden year.  I think he wants Funky Winkerbean to last for fifty years, so he can say he had a strip that reached that landmark.  Peanuts lasted for fifty years, Dick Tracy lasted for fifty years, The Far Side lasted for fifty years…that’s the only reason anyone talks about those strips, which are way inferior to mine.  So if get to fifty, I will enter the pantheon of the greats.

So, how does he reach that magic date?  By s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g these pitifully weak story arcs way past the breaking point, and having them haul more panels than their recommended load capacity.  You could hear them straining and buckling all last week, and I’m sure they’ve still got a week’s work to go starting tomorrow.  If you can stretch two days of “story” into two weeks, that Golden Anniversary is yours, baby!

This is not the first time this strip has had a space oddity or two–there’s plenty of sound and vision evidence.  From Funky always crashing in the same car, ending up in a Moonage daydream, to Wally living life on Mars while suffering panic in Detroit.  Just recently, Les had the chance to start a new career in a new town with all the young dudes, leading to fame, fashion and maybe even modern love (though not in a creepy way). However, thanks to the harassment of Le Chat Bleu (his laughing gnome), he rejected the changes and became one of the heroes.  He learned the heart’s filthy lesson, rejected those scary monsters, and chose not to become the man who sold the world.

All of this should have taken about the same time it takes to listen to a “Greatest Hits” album.  Instead, it deadheaded on for months and months.   That ought to be enough evidence that Tom Batiuk’s not doing it for the “art” anymore, he’s doing it for the “history.”  The last story I remember here that was even half-assed was when Pete met Flash Gordon; there seemed to be a little bit of engagement on the part of the author.  Everything I can recall since has been assless; I’m not even aware if there are any fully-assed stories.  One suspects not.

All I can say is, there’s a song that fits this perfectly.  I forget who made the song, but the chorus goes like this:

“Ashes to ashes, funk to Funky
We know Major Tom’s a junkie
Strung out in heaven’s high
Hitting an all-time low…”

Nothing Works Out If You Don’t Let It

Link To Today’s Strip

Good ol’ Cayla, always the affable doormat. “Oh, you’re spending the entire summer living large in an all-expenses paid five star Hollywood hotel suite and dining with movie stars? And I’m not invited? OK, whatevs, I’ll keep some lemonade on ice for you honey!”. Married folks everywhere are reading this and thinking, “uh yeah right, Tom, seems plausible”.

And then he returns home to inform her that the whole thing was for nothing. No big TV bucks, no fame, no future in the business, not so much as an autographed Mason Jarr 8×10 glossy. Nothing. But that’s our Cayla, always content with whatever scraps Les deigns to toss her way. She is, after all, a mere substitute who knows her place, which is directly behind the Lisa shrine with feather-duster in hand.

Look at Dickface in that last panel…(urge to kill rising rapidly). Har-dee-har har. Only Tombat could tell a story that takes years to unfold, have absolutely nothing happen then pretend it’s a delightful happy ending. Look at that moronic grin on his stupid face. Look at Cayla purring away in bliss…blech, just nauseating. And does anyone remember the part of the story where Les heroically fought for “credit”? I sure don’t. TB could have skipped this entire arc and just had Les reject the offer and it would have ended exactly the same way. What a sorry display. Thank God it appears to finally be over, hopefully he’s reached his Les quota for 2014.

Le Chat Stupide

Link To Today’s Strip

Yeah, that Hollywood sure is crazy all right. This arc was a perfect example. What a wacky place, like how they changed the cancer screenplay so that Lisa lived, the way they wrote an adopted son into the script, the way they go to restaurants…man, the zaniness is just overwhelming in Hollywood, just totally nutty. No wonder Thelma (who, like Mason, only gets to have a personality at the END of the story) is seeing an imaginary cat that Les talks to when he’s agonizing over writing about his dead wife. Very clever, Author Guy, very clever.

And all this time it’s been that damned cat that’s made Les the single most objectionable character in the history of ever. I see. Perhaps Batom needs to slow down with the seasonal craft beers until AFTER he finishes one of these mega-long arcs. What’s another ten minutes, right?

But seriously, if this is indeed the end of the epically annoying screenplay arc, talk about ending with a resounding thud. You can almost hear the sad trombone after panel three….”whaaaa-waaaa”. TB’s the master of the anticlimax, it’s like he wants to just get it over with as much as his readers do. What a dreary display.

Home Is Where The Apathy Is

Link To Today’s Strip

After a long, insufferable summer of sitting around doing nothing, Dickface just can’t wait to get home so he can sit THERE doing nothing. The sheer ambition of the man boggles the mind, doesn’t it? Porch swings, gazebos, pizza, his overweight dimwitted pals, comic books, pizza…maybe if he’s lucky his wife will get sick and die so he’ll finally have some new material to work with. Then everything will TRULY be just like it was before!

It’s increasingly clear that Author Guy’s greatest talent is the ability to keep a straight face during those moronic puff-piece interviews of his. I’ve seen better “writing” on cereal boxes. The guy who does “Bazooka Joe” is practically Hemingway next to this joker. This was a complete shambles from top to bottom, obviously the “work” of someone who stopped giving a shit years ago.

The funniest thing about this is how everyone respects Les AFTER he gives up and quits. Welcome to the Batiukverse, where up is down, black is white and apathy is a virtue to be respected and admired.