Troubling times. Except for the grassy hill comic, which combines the new setting with the running gag. It’s perfect.
Ryan did and I can’t emphasize this enough – in real life- ask a woman if she was a prostitute once. Like, he asked. He used the direct words. He did not get slapped, for some reason.
Then we get two peripheral characters battling it out. If you don’t know who three of them are, that makes sense. The fact that I don’t remember who one of them is, that makes it weird. The *azn thrust* Harvest guy is a representation of a dude-bro that Harvest was very close with, and he was a real homophobe. The guy in the white shirt is a redrawing of Fetus from a previous strip. The girl with the cat ears… who is that? I don’t know!
If you think you’re missing some narrative arc here, it’s because you are. It’s that this guy read the comic that insinuated he was gay (skipped, because trademark 19-year-old-male homophobia) and then attacked and fought Lanny for making the strip.
Oddly, the awareness of these characters that they are in a comic strip came together all at once, and the fragility of this reality plays into Chapter 4, when the strip tries to reinvent itself after being “cancelled.” Chapter 4 is titled “The Cancelled Years” and it’s set in outer space for some reason!
