"STFU Faye."
The Bubbles and Faye arc has been a far more interesting character story than Marten and Claire ever was (that one just seemed to twist down a dead end street.)
I've little interest in Marten and Claire at all.
Now... getting back to Marten and Faye... far more interesting dynamic.
There it is in a nutshell. Mature people's stable relationships with each other don't provide much conflict to write about. Relationships involving Faye stay interesting because she's a well of emotional turmoil.
Marten and Claire are like Dora and Tai or Dale and Marigold It was the getting to their relationship that was the interesting story bits. Now both couples have settled down into them, there just isn't a lot to drive a story unless something changes. In the end the comic is mostly about the various characters interpersonal relationships with each other, and those six are pretty settled now. So it's not to surprising that Jeph would turn to other characters, and introduce new ones so that he has something to write about. And honestly, I would prefer that than what some serialized works do and have something bad happen every time it seems the main character has a good thing going. Consider long running comic heroes like Spider Man or Batman who can never have a stable relationship without someone getting kidnapped constantly, dying or turning evil. I'd rather see characters rotating in and out of circulation than Marten being the eternal punching bag.
I get where you're coming from.
But surely it's possible to have a long running strip with two people-in a stable relationship-that actually invokes some kind of funny/dramatic/emotional content that holds the attention?
Having binge read the entire run in a very short time, and only recently finding out this forum existed, I had no idea that Claire was the result of
fan wish-list-dom. But, now that I've picked that up, it retroactively (
maybe) goes a little way in explaining why the character always felt off-balance with the rest of the script/cast to me.
Nothing to do with gender politics or anything else, she just always seemed... I dunno.. surplus to requirements?
(I'm not terribly keen on Clinton either, but then his love Triangle/Square storyline just (so far) seems to have died a death.)
Of course, now that I know the above, it does make me wonder if Claire's existence came about because of the split from Dora...
Or was the Dora split brought on because of the wish for Claire to exist?
Maybe neither, of course. But...if the latter... Boooo!
(Yeah, I liked the Marten/Dora dynamic a lot better - almost as much as Marten/Faye!)
The way things are going, I wouldn't mind if Bubbles' story carried on for a good while. I honestly think she is the best character Jeph has written to date. I'm still hoping the introduction of
Spookybot is a lead into deeper and darker things, and not just (as I said when they first appeared) a literal
Deus Ex Machina!
Cheers!