Since we went over how what Cayla claims in today’s strip is in no way true back in Tuesday’s post, I have little left to say. This strip is almost spectacular in how utterly boring it is.
I don’t think anyone would cry if Les retired two years early. Same goes for a certain cartoonist who is now, in fact, about two years away from a milestone anniversary that some experts speculate may also mark his retirement.
Hark! Saint Les has revealed his halo in today’s strip. He doesn’t want to miss teaching school to deal with the affairs that arise from being a professional writer. How noble!
Here is a list of strips where Les unremorsefully left his students with a substitute teacher:
January 9, 2011
January 31, 2011
September 25, 2017
October 5, 2017
October 30, 2017
November 14, 1997
May 7, 2018
And these are just the ones I could find in 15 minutes!
But this time… how noble!
Link to today’s strip (eventually).
As usual, Sunday’s strip was not available for preview. It’s impossible to know what we’ll “get,” except that pneumonia would be better. But me, I’ll go on and on for paragraph after paragraph!
I’m thinking we’re going to get more Les-Linda commiseration.
It’s an interesting compare-and-contrast with the characters Batiuk likes and those he’s, at best, indifferent to.
Les, Dinkle, Dullard and Pete have fortune rain from the skies on them. They’re handed good luck, wealth, perfect jobs (in the case of P&D), and (in the case of Dinkle) awards with no effort at all. Heck, Dinkle’s deafness and Mort’s dementia have been completely reversed (though the latter was only to bedevil Funky).
Linda, on the other hand, just can’t catch a break. Of course, Batiuk is using her to Prove A Point, so she’s doomed.
If only she’d thought to start writing comic books.
I’m also thinking that the commentators here are correct, that Linda is going to ask Les to write a book about Bull. “After all,” she’ll lie, “you were his friend. You knew him best.” Of course, the resultant book won’t be about Bull, it’ll be all about Les. He could call it “Bully Pulped–How a man discovered he was a monster, and got what he deserved.”
It also might be, as others have guessed, that Les will encourage Linda to write her own book. That seems to be Batiuk’s gateway to redemption; if a horrible character like Lillian can write a book, why now she’s a lovable old coot like Crankshaft.
The only thing certain is that it will be done completely ineptly. As the whole arc has been. If this story had focused on Bull’s perspective, on his anxieties over his condition and his fears about what he might do, and his worries about Linda’s future, well, then the story could have been an interesting one. But Batiuk being Batiuk, Bull is barely in his own story and it’s all about how Linda Feels Bad. Say, that’s a great title for her book!
Well, that’s it for my turn in the chamber of torpor. Tune in tomorrow, as Comic Book Harriet takes the reins and educates us, as the Batiuk Zone rotates trivially around us.
Son of Stuck Funky 
