First post, longtime lurker, blah blah, been reading QC forever, blah blah blah.
Anyway...
All I have to say is that this better be canon.
You beat me to it!
I have hated practically every guest strip, but this guest comic is what I wish would actually happen. I laughed at this comic while I have only chuckled at QC for the past months.
All the relationship drama has taken a lot of the fun out of everything, so something lighthearted like this is extremely refreshing (even if it is just a guest strip).
I agree with the bolded part, but not for the same reasons. I feel inclined to say that this single comic has (or rather, would have, if it was canon) progressed the story between Dora and Marten more than anything else Jeph has done since the breakup. I mean, sure:
a) Dora was supposed to go to therapy, but we haven't seen even as much as a hint she has actually been there. In fact, I just realized we haven't even seen here since 1848, which equals weeks in universe time.
b) Marten is supposedly somewhat over Dora (judging from the Padma-in-the-bar-arc), but what I feel is really missing is the two talking out things. I mean, all they have done since the break-up is repressing stuff and avoiding each other (cf. It'd be too weird.) I really wish for some progress about that.
That's because this is a character-driven comic, not a plot-driven one. Like real people, Marten and Dora aren't going to go out of their way to confront each other and deal with each other post-break-up a mere few weeks after it. Neither one is that foolish. You're talking about two people who (a) had a lengthy relationship, (b) lived together for a bit of it, and (c) were friends before that and share most of their own friends. We're not talking about two people who started dating shortly after meeting each other; we're talking about something far more complicated and now fragile.
Having them deal with each other so soon after crash-and-burning makes absolutely no sense character-wise. It would be script-logic: "They do it because the script says so." And that's bad writing; it ignores the characters Jeph's spent the last several years developing. Dora is probably going to therapy; she's going to be in no shape to deal with Marten right away (heck, I had a friend who spent nearly a year in therapy before meeting with me to deal with something that happened between us--and that was just as roommates).
And things have been progressing, just not completely in the Dora-Marten relationship. Most of the strips have followed Marten's point-of-view, not surprising considering he's the main character. I really liked seeing Angus and Faye together, since we hadn't seen that relationship for a while, for instance. And the return to humor--and QC always has been a humor comic with drama, not a soap operatic one--was welcome after a run of out-and-out melodrama.
If and when QC gets to the point that Dora and Marten meet again, that probably will be another major arc. What happened is a major event that affects all of the characters, and it's consequences are not something that should be rushed into. Otherwise, you wind up with something as meaningful as today's guest strip.
(Yay, Pizza Girl!)
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10 (12.2%)
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Topic: WCDT 28 Feb-4 Mar 2011 (1871-1875) (Read 104596 times)