Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for January 12, 2015

Es la verdad.

For Rosa, it almost seemed like a “piece of cake”. For Gunther, though, the pressure seemed to be really "mountain"…..

Glad to see that Gunther’s story is continuing. Also happy to see that Rosa’s uncle won’t be sending the Marines to drag her back to Lima.-Now to find out about Gunther’s transformation from clean-shaven wearer of plaid to a possibly more mature man(?)

Agree with you

This is interesting…that Rosa’s uncle ran away when he was 12. So, he is acquainted with with some of what drives her. But, I also think he learned from experience and is afraid Rosa will make some poor choices just like he did…. ;)

That’s one reason why I used to scoff at the question: “Who do you most want to be like?” (the usual “expected” answers being some “hero” or “sports figure” or the like). But I respond: “Why spend time trying to copy somebody else, when I could be spedning that time trying to be the best me that I can be?….” – And, too, there’s also the aspect of learning to modestly accept when you are limited in doing something that others may be able to do, pretty much “knowing your limits”. Especially since you are the one that has to deal with such repercussions resulting from “going over your limit”… – Plus, it’s nice to know that there are still people out there who still “thirst for adventure” and “blaze their own path” and can still be “successful” (though not always apparent in terms of others’ estimations)….

“The More You No…”“Out Of Limits” (♫)“A Graft From A Summer Rosa”“Just Say When”“Your Stop’s Comin’ Up”“Know Your Role”“The Man Who Said No To Liberty Vallance” (♫)“Gunther At The Crossroads”“All’s Fine At The Borderline”“Parting Gifts”“To The Edge And Back”or“No-ing Is Half The Battle”

Maybe we will get to see Rosa’s uncle. Maybe he is the one who bought Gunther’s ticket back home. The driver’s words in the last panel are oh so very true.

I used to be a pushover for favors. If i didn’t have an excuse I couldn’t get out of anything… always doing for others, until I just said NO… no explanation no excuse. Just no… It worked and I have been more in control of my life ever since.

Sorry, but I don’t see running home to Mama after one day in the mountains as being especially “brave”.

Good. Keep Gunther’s story on the front burner.

I kinda glad they’re getting rid of Rosa. the light shining from her face made the the strip hard to read.

Wise words for Gunther. I hope he’s taken them to heart.

I think the driver is right when he says “no” is the bravest word to say. One chooses what to do based on who s/he is deep-down. Go, Gunther!!! ;)

Clearly Luis is more than just Rosa’s uncle’s driver. So… is he Rosa’s uncle’s agent, or Rosa’s uncle?j

Pretty much!!!

Bern was really checkin’ out the new-look Gunther.. Maybe something might happen??? ;)

True, so true.

Well, with potentially six days more on this, there’s gotta be something else that is yet to be told. I just wonder if that something will involve some drama or a bit more “melancholy”?

Seems this ship is sunk. And Rosa’s not the least bit broken up about it. She’s proud of him, but there were no declarations of love.

And he didn’t stay in the mountains for one day. He stayed there for at least 45 days before poor old Luis gets back.

whatever some might feel about this story line, if you are aware of the average comments after every episode, this seems to be one of the most followed and commented comics ever..Greg is a pretty sharp guy …LOL

“You mean that crazy Mexican girl didn’t leave with the plaid gringo?Ai! She thinks she can pay her rent with firewood, but eats more than a good llama.Next week, we pack her in a medical waste box and send her back to her uncle in Lima!”

Hopefully Gunther will eventually learn that know should come before yes.

Van driving may in fact be an ambition of Gunther’s, since he doesn’t yet have a driver’s license, does he? We know he doesn’t own a car, but we’ve never seen him pick up Rosa for a date in his Mom’s car, either. Rosa (or Luann, or Quill) always drives him around. So Luis may in fact be Gunther’s hero!

Sage advice, Luis.

Some day, Gunther, you’ll be sitting in your Barcalounger with your bag of Cheetohs and your remote, hoping your nice little wife doesn’t know how often you think back to that smart, adventurous, dynamic, beautiful woman you walked away from so long ago. Meanwhile, Rosa will have long since found someone she can walk behind, instead of drag behind her.

“Beside.” I meant “walk beside.” Damm these early morning comments.

Gunther’s driver is a very smart man.

It seems the airline lost his luggage and he had to buy a souvenir tee at the airport gift shop. Ergo, the lack of plaid.

True!

“I have always wanted to be myself, not really anyone else.”.Be yourself.Everybody else is already taken.Nonetheless, the “you” which you decide to become can be better or worse.

“Brave,” eh? Weeeeell We’ll SEE How BRAVE You Two Heroes Are, When Starting Down the Mountain, a Blinding Rain Starts and You Suddenly Realize Somebody STOLE the Van’s Windshield Wipers….,

@Charles Smith“And this relates to this comic, how? STFU”.Most rude of you, R French, telling others to shut up, you antifreedom of speech person, you..He was trying to stop poor iammu from mistakenly making his “juice” “jus” “juis” error for the 539th time.

“are a lot of people going to be upset if Gunther not shaving is because of the breakup? That he’s too depressed to go through his normal hygiene routine?”.Yes, I would be heartbroken.

> Luann universe time is not linearly attached to seismic-2 time.There are randomly located congruence points.>And it is on the basis of those congruence points that we are able to see that Gunther must have left the village at most a few days after arriving there, in order to have left it clean-shaven and arrive home on NYE with a beard.

But how do his looks change do drastically between leaving the mountain and getting back home?

I totally “get” that comics don’t have linear time. But they do offer “calibration points”, when they make reference to real dates (Halloween, the national election, and New Year’s Eve). Then they offer some internal times within the strip (“the next day”, “next week”, etc., plus just the amount of time that it takes certain things to happen. Those “markers” show us that Gunther and Rosa must have left for the mountain village in late November at the very earliest and that Gunther must have left in early December since he was clean-shaven then but had a beard on NYE. Therefore, he was in the mountains for less than a week. Likely, Luis was sent to retrieve the two truants the very next day, when their unannounced absence was noted.

Luis- como le padre de Gunther!I hope G-man listens to his wisdom.

Did Rosa seem sad that Gunther was leaving? She actually seemed happy. I guess she is smart enough to see that Gunther was miserable. Ten years from now she will be the wife of some mountain dweller with six kids and no memory of what makeup and perfume did for ones appearance and allure.

FINALLY, Gunth. Finally!

I like Luis. I am hopeful we will have more of his role at the clinic fleshed out more fully before this arc ends.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++I wonder… what do all of you think about this…. will Rosa remain as a regular character although she is out in remote areas of Peru, or will she be written out?

The “marker” is that Rosa and Gunther had to leave for the mountain village in late November (in strip time, not our time) at the latest, in order for the other events to synch up. (Those would be the Halloween party, the post-election “Gunther” party, Gunther’s later worrying about Mr. Gray, and Rosa’s plan to take the van to the village “next week”). The only assumption is how long it took Gunther to grow that beard. He is just 18 years old, and he doesn’t seem to have an over-abundance of testosterone (from his “build”), nor has he shown any signs of being at all “hairy”. Three weeks is an assumption, but it’s not an unreasonable one for the reasons just noted, so he left the village in early December. He therefore could not have been there for more then a few days.

Gunther needs a woman who makes him feel good about who he is. Rosa has always made him feel like he is not enough, like he is not okay the way he is.

Exactly, ReallyBad2! He didn’t just get this way on a plane trip home from Peru.

Well said, Senor… Well said.

I like Luis.

“Sad how ethnocentric and/or racist some are”

Not to mention snobby.

ReallyBad2 said, about 2 hours ago@DavidHuieGreenSad how ethnocentric and/or racist some are-“Excuse me, what does his race have to do with anything? I have flagged your post for calling me racist, and hope that the moderators will do something about this as it is incredibly offensive and against the TOS of this site.”.You are offended by being noted as offensive?Interesting..I didn’t actually CALL you ethnocentric or racist or both (even though it was your attitude which brought the thought to mind when you assumed people of Hispanic descent driving trucks must be devoid of wisdom or intellect), I simply remarked how sad it is.VERY SAD-Luis has been making reports to the mysterious uncle daily.All has been with his permission.-“In your opinion. The comic definitely hasn’t portrayed it that way”.Nah, not even my opinion, just a possibility I threw out as an example of the fact that we don’t know what we don’t know.WE HAVE NOT BEEN TOLD OR SHOWN EVERYTHINGTherefore incipient breakups or dead end futures or foolish Hispanics is not a certainty until we are shown.

Maybe Bernice starts working on Guenther? Then, Rosa comes back. Could take a while to develop. Just a thought.

I wonder if Luis is Rosa’s uncle in disguise?

“… those who get that comics don’t have linear time, and those who don’t”-——————————————-I will anoint myself self-appointed proxy for the entire National Cartoonists Society for a moment: “you got that right!”

Merci, Mon ami

“there are ln(.693147) types of people in the world”.Just talking to myself here, but I think that should be e to the 0.693147 or ln(7.389056099).

Sometime dreams are just that…dreams. Welcome back to reality Gunther.

Gunther has changed. Unshaven, long hair, need for coffee, and now the introduction of the word “brave”. Something Wicked This Way Comes.

As far as I can see, Luis is genetically of the same “race” as Gunther or Luann. .Speaking Spanish has nothing to do with “race” in the traditional sense of that overused word.

“Sometimes the bravest word is ‘No’”. And sometimes it’s just a weak-kneed way of saying “I give up”. Quitting isn’t necessarily “brave”.

(You DO understand “and/or” don’t you?)

Anti-log is good.

hmmmm… yes…. it is here on this long drive back to Lima that the learning and growing and changing begins… we hope.

I’m impressed by Gunther’s growth in this arc. He came out of his shell; maybe not as far as some people would have liked, but enough for more growth. And, maybe, we’ll see Rosa again….maybe.

Thanks! We shall probably learn more about the chronology of Gunther’s last 2 months in Peru, when he finishes telling us what all happened that led to his coming back in such an unkempt fashion. (Did he shower yet???)

I am thinking that maybe Luis and Gunther will encounter a mountain storm or something that causes them to have to camp out for a bit.

somewhere along the way Gunther loses all his luggage… maybe…

plaid shirts, shaving supplies etc.. we will see..

ReallyBad2…. I would tend to disagree… just because Gunther never showed 5-oclock shadow, does not mean the scruffiness took 3 weeks to grow. Even at 18 or 19, I would have looked scruffy like that after 3-4 days, and I had a “baby-face” back then. So, I still think that the idea of Gunther’s “new look” is more due to 3-4 days of not shaving as opposed to seismic-2’s idea of it taking 3 weeks for Gunther to accomplish that “look”. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++I think if Gunther were to sport a real beard/moustache (one that is grown out more than “scruff”…. would probably take him a bit of time… probably 3-8 weeks depending on the speed of growth. But, Greg is not depicting what I would call a beard or moustache… he is depicting the start of growing a beard/moustache…. in other words…. scruffy 3-4 day growth.

http://www.gocomics.com/comic/explore/1103726/2

I still say he should have stayed in Lima and work on the computer systems.. He was needed there

There’s a denoument coming, boys and girls.Wait for it!

Check out the new Luann Cover Photo on the Facebook Page! Looks like Gunther is keeping his scruff for a bit! :-)

And, it also looks like TJ is still in the picture.. literally! ;-PPP

Luann Facebook Page

He was not saying no to her. He was saying yes to something else…we just don’t know what that is yet.

What evidence do we have Rosa’s parents were in on the placement plan?-“Rosa says so.”.She said she defied her parents in the strip you showed. She also said they “let me come”, so you’re saying she didn’t defy them by coming whereas I figure she was still in defiance despite them not tying her to the tree or locking her in the dungeon..“I fail to understand why you keep bringing race into this, it’s disturbing. Stop it. I don’t care what race she is.”.I shall believe you since you say so. I never brought it up in her regard, just figured tha automatic assumption of lack of wisdom on Luis might be related to something which would trigger an automatic bias against him since none of the written words supported it..Lots of people think they aren’t biased against “other” but they surely grab the concept of “other” at every chance. (Not YOU, of course, OTHER people.)

Its only a cartoon still sometime they can hurt some of the the readers

The 1907 Bordeaux pipe must be very interesting! Is there a photo of it or something similar online you can point out to me? What type of pipe is your briar “go-to” when you used to indulge?

Things are getting better, Gunther is riding in the FRONT seat. Calm before the storm?

Gunther’s self-awareness is improving, ruthlessly, just as Rosa kicks him to the roadside in favor of service in a remote mountain village in Peru. She is tough-minded but tender-hearted. How should we describe Gunther?

Did he say “no” in spanish or “no” in english?

I do believe that “Leslie” would not fare well if he tried to mix it up with the new Gunther.

“You called me racist because I don’t respect Luis the van driver.”.Nope.

Didn’t call you that.Commented about suspected ethnocentrism.Currently considering question of class contempt, to discount anything “van driver” says.

Personally, I like Rosa and Luis, no matter what those who belittle them think.

Alas. It appears my optimism about a more mature Gunther was misplaced. (Aren’t we supposed to say SPOILER ALERT?)

Meet the new Gunther. Same as the old Gunther.

“Particularly his mom, along with that Mr. Gray upsetting the balance of things…”

Maybe the angst over Mr Gray was really just an excuse for wanting to come home.

Uh, huh. Really good crystal ball you have!

“Probably what could have figured into Gunther deciding to come home is that he misses structure, familiarity, and home. Particularly his mom, along with that Mr. Gray upsetting the balance of things…”.You wouldn’t cheat, would you?(On the other hand, your post came out ahead of the next day’s posting.)

That’s VERY good tea.(smile implied)

Everyone has their limits and people need to accept that.