Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for July 30, 2016

He’ll be exposed and in trouble soon.

Ohhh boy……this is going to get nasty, soon.

Well, Leslie is charmed.

Soon to be known as the school of hard knox.

Somebody likes him. A new experience for Les. (However I wonder if there was more than $37 in the jar).

As I said, a smart inside crook only pockets a part of the money, over a longer period of time.

(She’s falling right into his trap!)

Pru is a talented actress. I think that she might be on to him and be planning a sting operation.

I’ve got a feeling she’s onto Knox, and is trying to give him a ‘graceful’ way to be turn honest.

Maybe she can straighten him out with praise, get him to “find” a few more dollars

Night-Gaunt49 said, “I wonder how much he claimed for himself?”.Finder’s fee

It’s gonna be a while before Les gets exposed and caught. He’s got the staff fooled. And getting praised for it.

I’m beginning to get impatient to see Leslie exposed. I hope Lady Justice has a field day with him. I hardly know the guy and I already want to snap his neck.

“Con-Sequences”“Stolen Moments”“A Jarring Experience”“Sweeten The Pot”“Turn A Brow Upside Down”“Brow Sugar”“Dear And Tickle Season”“Reverse Reverse Reverse Psychology”“A Jack Of All Spades…And Schoolmaster Of None”“Tickled Ears, Pickled Tears”

“Between A Rockford And A Hardcastle (with a dash of McCormick)”“The Wolf Who Cried ‘Boy, Oh Boy!’ "

or“A Lot Of Baggage For A Guilt Trip”

Mr. Gray, the uncle, knows what Les is really like, but he still lets him work at the Fuse with all these trusting people who do not know his true character yet. That’s a lousy way for Mr. Gray to treat the trusting DeGroot family.

So far Pru has liked everyone she’s met. I think she has no idea what Les is really like. Remember how much Pru liked Bernice when they first met even though Bernice hated her and was hostile towards her?

Hard Knox?

“News flash: US Govt survey shows three out of four people make up 75% of the total population.”^It’d probably be even less, if it were quarters.

Seems Les has lifted a lot of things, over the years… that now includes his eyebrows….-Or maybe Prudence is doing the lifting…operating like a plastic surgeon, elevating them with ‘precise surgical maneuvers’ stemming from raised suspicions?-Does Les really think his hands are like butter, smoothly moving in all that bread?-If they do catch him in the act of jacking the cash from that container, it’ll likely become ‘an open and shut case’…..

Greg’s ugliest characters are these two.

WAITl! Only 37 MEASLY Dollars?!!?

WHAT, the ‘Good and Gentle Townsfolk’ of Pittsville HATES “Impoverished, at Risk Kids,” or Something???

The sneaky look on Les’s face as he was counting what looked like a whole lot more the $37 dollars in yesterday’s strip tells me he’s a creep and a thief.

Let’s see how tough leslie is in prison because that is where he’s headed.They’ll waterboard him but it won’t be water.

Im sure she knows whats going on. He charged the acts and he asked for donations from the patrons….No she knows there is more than $35 in the till

Les didn’t look like the fundraising was so weak in yesterday’s strip.

will “pride of ownership” change Les’ behavior?hmmm …

“Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.” Street wise Pru is luring Les into a trap that will burn his butt, and Mr. Gray knows all about it.

I think we’re going to find out whether Leslie’s conscience can be awakened.

Don’t hack on the poor con…He’s on his way to a “useful” career as a Congressman!And will never be indicted….

Pru, work it girl, work it! LOL

Oh she’s a smooth character. She’s playing a role right now.

The snake charmer: mas adelante.

There MUST be security cams that can prove Les pocketed most of the take. If Uncle Al ran a Las Vegas night club, I think that he can more than catch his nephew in this lie.

Yeah, and then uncle Hitch is going to Knox him on the back off the head real soon. he knows his nephew very well.

“Gee, if the school is being named after me, let me make my own donation,” as he gives back 1/2 of what he took.

@JPuzzleWhiz, Only paying patrons get to see the show. Did you buy a ticket?

Besides to show enough of an “act” to be appreciated would take an extra week per performance in a 3 panel COMIC STRIP.

Les gets his own office at the school, with a sign on it saying “The bucks stop here”.*Yesterday someone said Jonah looked smug as he passed Brad. So I reaffirm my comment two days ago— I think Jonah was mocking Brad when he repeated Brad’s statement to Shannon— “Let’s duo.”*Unfortunately, being incompetent does not mean Jonah is without wiles.

“Les is going to get caught” – probably the way TJ and Tiffany were “caught” in the “meals for firefighters” scam years ago, where, IIRC, they never actually did keep any of the money, and the only person outside of the family that ever found about this – without explanation – was whoever was in charge of the Miss (Junior?) Chamber of Commerce pageant (who also, somehow, figured out that “Sheraton St. Louis” was Tiffany).

Welcome to Trump’s Amurica — where Les is guilty until found innocent.

Pru IS a good actress. She and Mr. Gray are already hip to his action, and it will go down badly for Les. IMHO

Not the School of Hard Knox?

Wow! Not one person thinks he is actually collecting for Pru’s project?

Come on, Pru – you’re from New Yawk. You’re certainly cautious about this twit’s dollar count!

I sure hope Mr Grey is the good guy that everyone thinks he is. I hope he did not help the DeGroots to build a front for the Mob. That maybe too serious for a comic strip. I really want to see Mr Greg comfrontt Les and said he gave him a chance to straighten out and Les blew it. Jail would be appropriate about now.

@DavidHuieGreen“I was speculating on numbers, and there is no finders fee for that.”.Sure there is. The finders fee is the difference between the actual number and $37.

When did Mr. Grey kick in $30? I missed that. And I still wonder if Mr. Grey is going to insist on his own share of Les’ “proceeds”, or denounce him for a crook. Did “Uncle Al” get Les this job in the first place so he could have a deniable source of cash income? That seems utterly bizarre, even for the Luanniverse.

I’m going to be very disappointed if the Evanses just change the subject on the whole question of why Mr. Grey wanted Les to get this job, and whether he knew Les couldn’t be trusted. Remember, Les wasn’t just faking his way around the charity donations, he also nicked Ox’s tip at least once.

I’m not going to appreciate being told “it’s just a comic strip”, after all that. Pru isn’t that stupid, and Mr. Grey really shouldn’t be, either.

And, to earth native: How much do you know about Dinesh D’Souza? I wouldn’t hire that guy to walk my dog!

Huh? but for just a few dollars more you can enroll all the kids in Trump U.

If we assume that each of the acts made a $10 donation to the “youth program” on sign-up day and Les only admitted to collecting $16 at the staff meeting, where we learned there were 34 acts, then he made a cool $324 profit.Dare we say there is a similar ratio of “collected” vs. “donated” from show night?

overhead is overhead. you’ve got to pay your fundraisers too.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love the strip overall. It’s just that I feel we, the readers, got the shaft when it came to the actual show performances.”.What did you expect for $37?Seeing any of the floor show would have been similar to seeing the performers signing up, just in different poses.Really little to gain and some were already griping about length of story line..“And he’ll probably say that he’s giving it “out of his own pocket”.”. The road to recovery can be long, twisting, with a bit of back-sliding. First he has to take the first step forward and Prudence is working on that one.

First lesson of the School of Knox:Don’t try to con a savvy New Yorker and a Connected Uncle….

“… and don’t make this mistake a third time.”I think you just opened the door for those rebels, Greg and Karen, to NEVER show a performance. Dante’s Hell for you, my friend.

Re your open letter – personally, I’m fine not “seeing” the show. I think we are seeing the real show – the one that’s unfolding “behind the curtain.”

I sure hope y’all are right and that Pru is actually on to Les’s tricks. I sure hope that’s what her gushing enthusiasm in the third cell is all about. Looking forward to watching this all unfold… popcorn, anyone?

I think it will be awhile before Les is found out. Then it will be a major issue that will hurt but not close the theater.

really JPW ?That sort of “fake-out” has become a pretty standard tongue-in-cheek in-joke to viewers. I believe SNL used to do it periodically in their skits. Sorry for your frustration, but the acts performing wasn’t more than a side-issue to the main point of the arc.

I guess I’m alone here in thinking Les may have changed. I went back to yesterday’s strip and tried to count the money, but was unable to determine if there were anything but ones, so I don’t know how much he had. Second, just the idea that Pru is aware of this gives me some hope. Prior to this, we all assumed Les was running his own scam. Maybe he’ll help her because she shows him some respect by calling him “Mr Knox” rather than Leslie. This strip is a little too sunny to think there won’t be some redemption.

I was looking up some videos and found this one of Grace van der Waal, which a number of you may have already seen. To me the message of the song is one that fits what some Luann characters are now experiencing.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uC7XVirRFAA

And his heart grew 3 sizes that day…

Haven’t read everyone’s comments but it could be that Les will be embarrassed and shamed (without being totally exposed) into cleaning up his act.

Lots of TV shows and movies do the same, and for purposes of story, it’s just a ‘vehicle’ to move the story along. And they didn’t show Quill and Tiffany in the “George!” play. Same with the production Luann helped Quill and Manezon with.-Besides, if they did incorporate actual acts, I’m sure you’d have this person say: “Why didn’t they do it this way?”, or “That way?”, or if they only could show this person or that person, some would still complain about which acts they got to see, etc. -So, any way you slice it, can’t please all the people, all the time. You just have to chalk it up to choices. And too, the talent show was really ,in effect, just the background, while the intertwining happenings between different characters was the actual main feature.

“Skim Bilk”^Heh, heh, aptly sums it up!…..although I think his version of skimming is likely more than ‘2%’….almost verging on ‘whole’, even…

Hmmm, maybe she has some suspicion, but her modus operandi is to appeal to his better nature. She believes he has a better nature, and praising him, and naming the youth program after him will liberate that “better” nature. She is a character who encourages the other characters to do progressive and positive things, and she has a very positive outlook. If this is true, then the question that remains of course is whether Les has a better nature. Did I call him sociopathic? This being Luannverse though maybe he is salvageable. Maybe, but Nahhh, is my inclination.

One more comment: one commentator commented that Greg’s drawing of Pru and Leslie are the must “ugly” characters. That is surprising, which is a gentlemanly way of putting it. Neither are physically ugly, Pru is a very positive, energetic person, with a lot of hair, and looks good in those shorts. Les is not a bad looking guy in a Snidley Whiplash kind of way. In fact for those who don’t know or remember, Snidley Whiplash was the villain to Dudley Do-right in the old Rocky and Bullwinkle animated TV show. Old Snidley was drawn to look like mustachioed villains from the old black and white short movies and TV shows where the Snidley character was always trying to make off with, or do in the good guys girl, or the money, or some other kind of mischief. He usually would tie the damsel in distress on a train track, and the hero would have to come rescue her in the nick of time. Old Dudley was always rescuing Nell Fenwick, his dear love. Anyway back to Luannverse! Leslie is a good example of does he look a certain way because he is such a mean, sneaky bully, who really is a coward underneath, although his uncle gave us some reason to realize he may have had some bad things happen to him in childhood that contribute to his lousy nature, or is he ugly because he is ugly? He is not physically ugly, and let me just say that was a silly comment by whomever, although that commentator is entitled to his or her opinion. But clearly Pru is not at all ugly, or drawn to be ugly, nor is Leslie, although his character is ugly in action. Just thought I would contribute to the discussion.

A school named after Leslie Knox? lol That’s like naming the AA Headquarters after W. C. Fields.

We heard part of an act. It wove into the story underway.Perhaps something visually related might happen behind another storyline in the future. For example, a couple is whispering back and forth about their love life. In the background in panel one magician Gunther looks smitten by Tiffany and wraps his cloak around her, while in panel two he bends her back for a stage kiss, and in panel three lifts out the toy rabbit. Hmmm, come to think of it, that would be better for a pregnancy announcement btwn the whispering couple… Anyway, just an illustration of how something visual that is similar to the heard act might at some point support a main story.

For the first time (I dare say in the history of this strip) Leslie Knox is drawn, .in the last panel, without a sneer on his face. I think it suggests possible attitude change going forward.

Heh heh. Only 37 bucks? Really?!?!???

Unlike with “Yule Daze,” it didn’t bother me much to not see the acts in the Fuse Follies. Why? Because we got some idea of what some of the acts were.By contrast, with “Yule Daze,” there was never any indication given of what the show was like, who was in the cast, or anything like that. I even got the impression that the Evanses were making fun of the readers for wanting to know that by showing a completely dark panel representing Knute turning his camera off for the show:The act I might have liked to have seen some of this time would probably be Luann and Bernice, because we saw them struggling over coming up with their act, they didn’t seem to be doing particularly well even when they came up with the chin puppet idea, and yet Bernice thought they were “awesome.”

Whether you are for or against Hillary Clinton, I don’t think the Luann comments pages are the place to discuss that issue. We have enough to argue about just from the Luanniverse without bringing real-world politics in.Even the last time there was a storyline about voting in the comic strip (November 2014), no real-world politicians were mentioned in the strip.

Re: Your open letter about not seeing the stage productions…………I’m bummed that the great romantic build ups are always disappointing let downs.

This is not the forum for politics or religion. Worry about important things like: will Gunther and Tiffany lose their virginity to each other? Will Rosa ever come home? Does anyone in this strip have good hair?

I wouldn’t care if in the next couple of strip Less did something heroic and selfless, I hate him for being a worth-Less lying twit. He is absolutely the worst character ever. Go die in a hole

Well, yes, Les is purloining the donations, but I don’t see that as very different than what TJ and Tiffany did that one time.