Les Moore: the early years.

[dreadedcandiru2]

To understand the comic strip Funky Winkerbean at all, one has to keep two things in mind. The first thing is that it's the saga of four men who went to High School in the late 1970s -Les Moore, "Crazy" Harry Klinghorn, Bull Bushka and the eponymous Funky Winkerbean- and their friends and relations. The second fact is that of the four, Funky is not the central character; while the strip still bears his name despite Batiuk's attempt to change it into Winkerbean and Company, he's only sort of a sidekick. The protagonist is the first man  I mentioned: Les Moore. Since Batiuk has divided his strips into three eras which he calls "phases", it seems fair to start our look at  Les Moore as he was in High School or, as Batiuk calls it, Phase One. While a reasonably diligent student, it would be a kindness to say that he played a rather poor social game; in fact, the only reason he had a social life was because he'd befriended the title character. He lacked social skills, confidence with girls, the courage to stand up to an embittered and angry victim of abuse and, most telling of all, athletic skills. That last sort of disturbs the Les Moore of Phase Three the most; even thought he's sort of confused by how athletic his daughter is, he wishes that the genes for sports prowess hadn't skipped a generation; that way, he wouldn't have had been forced to absorb so much humiliation in gym class. Even his on-again, off-again dalliance with Lisa Crawford was an example of awkwardness; thirty years have come and gone and people still remember that when they kissed, their orthodontic appliances got stuck together.

Comments

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

At least he was tolerable then. I remember when he was a senior and though he could lord over the freshmen only to have it backfire.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

Well, when one realizes that a preschooler could take him, that's not much of a surprise.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

Now that would be funny. Kind of like those kids that beat-up Von Kaiser in Punch-Out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqKyziNJkYc).