Maybe she didn’t beat him up like Bull did, but during the twenty years they spent in high school together, Cindy generally treated Les like shit. She wouldn’t have him for a lab partner, let alone a boyfriend. Even when Les wound up keeping her company on that dateless New Year’s Eve, Cindy swore him to secrecy. And decades later she has the gall to break his chops for being a gentleman.
Tag: Les
Top-Down Approach
After paying to fly Les 2,000 miles to LAX, you’d suppose Mason would at least spring for an Uber to bring him the rest of the way. Instead, the task falls to the eternally youthful and hot Cindy Summers Winkerbean Jarre to fetch Les. because what else are true friends for? Also, does Cindy still even have that job at Buddyblog? His arrival in sunny California has done nothing to snap Les out of his apathy; he even slouches in the passenger seat of Cindy’s sporty, battleship gray roadster. Batty’s gone to great lengths to depict Les’ complete lack of confidence. And you knew that TB was going to compose some kind of wry punchline around “pitch”… but when else have we seen Les “pitch” anything? His endless book signings attract fans who come prepared to buy his work (in multiple!). He sure doesn’t “pitch” an appreciation of language arts to the generation of students who’ve endured his class. He pitched himself in matrimony–twice–and somehow succeeded both times. You know who can pitch though? Mrs. Les Moore, aka Cayla. Come to think of it, Les is the last denizen of the Funkiverse who should be making sporto analogies.
The Les You No
Today being 4/20 and all, I found it perfectly appropriate that Mason’s contact photo on Les’ phone should be a picture of some cannabis. But the “trees” we’re looking at in today’s strip are the kind that “don’t provide any shade,” not the kind you smoke. So, the Lisa’s movie is already in the pitch meeting stage, is it? Normally, this would mean that the screenplay’s been completed. Otherwise, they have nothing to “pitch.” Of course, normally, location scouting for a major motion picture takes place after the script is done, and by someone (or a team of people) whose job it is to scout locations; not by the leading man/exectutive producer taking pictures with his cellphone.
Les, perhaps still smarting over his students’ shabby treatment of Batton Thomas, shows little enthusiasm over going to Hollywood to pitch the movie. This sends the normally mellow Mason into a tizzy, demanding that Les join him immediately, his teaching job be damned. Mason is hellbent on involving Les in every single aspect of this movie project, but one questions the wisdom of dragging him along to the pitch meetings. Is no one in Hollywood going to be aware that Lisa’s Story already had been optioned and gone into production nearly six (!) years ago? And that, after insisting that he write the screenplay, Les arrived in Hollywood, splitting his time between complaining, daydreaming, and wishing for death , before walking away from and sabotaging the project?
And he just can’t hide it…
Let’s all bid a hopeful farewell to Batton and, especially, Les in today’s strip. Les will sadly and undoubtedly return (please not for a good long while!), but what of Batton? This week’s story arc served to make him even les relevant than he seemed when he first appeared, and that’s saying something.
Not that doing interesting and relevant things is really a requirement to appear in Funky Winkerbean these days, but unless Batton gets cancer or (a year from now) the COVID-19 it is hard to see what else TB has for him to do. He’s appeared at Free Comic Book Day and he’s stood in front of Les’ class. What else is there? Well, if Batton ever does return, it’s a sure bet it will be during one of my stints writing this blog. I’m two for two so far, lucky me.
Now if Tom Batiuk himself is excited about writing this strip, he sure can hide it. He lost control years ago, and he probably likes it…
Meeting the Four Hundred
Les just continues to mock Batton in today’s strip. Sheesh, whadda jerk! Apparently newspaper cartoonists were the original social distancing champions, which you probably would be seeing memes about if you were Facebook friends with one. Unfortunately, gags this terrible are not a rare sight in Funky Winkerbean…
Emily or, uh Amelia… whichever one wears pink and doesn’t act like what TB imagines a Hot Topic shopper to be, asks a perfectly reasonable question for a “kids these days” kid. Seriously, it is a good question and it demonstrates a knowledge of what a comic strip is, how it is distributed, and its primary measure of success. Batton, of course spins this perfectly fine question into a self-pitying humblebrag so deftly that even Les seems impressed. Newspapers may be dying, but his comic strip is in EVERY SINGLE ONE of the ones that remain! What’re you gonna accomplish in your life, Blondie?
Son of Stuck Funky 
