Is it just me, or is the comic needing a story arc lately? It seems a bit feckless. The last arc was Dale at Marigold’s, which was way short and a bit forced. The previous one was Dale and May. Most of the characters don’t have anything to resolve, except:
Dale and Marigold need to bang. Do I care if they don’t? Well, a little: I care what Momo thinks of it all.
Angus may move away and what he and Faye will make of that.
Wherever the hell we’re going with Claire. I am highly interested in this, but I don’t know that Jeph wants to move that ball yet.
Am I missing any arcs? Everything seems a bit too settled and we keep getting one-off comics that don’t have any point, or have maybe a 3-strip arc (like the current one so far). That doesn’t make them bad comics, but QC seems to do well with long arcs with short funniness interspersed in those arcs.
Recent ones? There’s the impending arc between Martin’s mother and Jim from the Secret Bakery, but that’s pretty ancient.
We keep getting references to the CoD basement, I feel like there’s plot hooks there.
But really, QC is a slice of life comic, there doesn’t have to be a lot of story arcs or resolution to them. Honestly, I’d rather have something threads left dangling then get forced resolutions to them.
Well, my complaint might be that there’s not really many threads dangling. I just jotted a list of resolved/unresolved plot issues. Unresolved used to be a long list, but it’s way short right now.
Current unresolved issues:
Claire gender arc
Faye and Angus NYC
Marigold, Dale banging
Dormant or almost:
Dora/Thai (yes, we just saw them, but seems like thin plot potential)
Sven, manslut arc.
Marten: Padma
Marten, Hanners: band
Marten’s Mom: relationship needs.
Dead plot:
Raven anything
Penelope/Wil
Steve/Cosette
Hannelore anything
Marten’s Dad + spouse
(Not sure where to place Momo; she tends to pop up in several of these arcs, but is dormant conflict-wise lately)
QC used to leave a lot of unresolved issues around - for years! - and we seem to have a dearth of those right now. I don’t want them resolved right now - not at all! - I just sense little plot tension that the “slice of life” comics can play against.
I miss Pintsize. What the hell happened to that guy? I mean, he’s there, but barely… And I’m with Malacandra. Kinda missing that buddy-buddy interplay from the early days. They haven’t done that one in a looooong time.
I like Jacques’ work but I sometimes feel he suffers from “new toy” syndrome. He’ll get bored and introduce new characters into the strip. And he’ll have fun with the new characters and they’ll be in all the strips for a while but then he’ll get bored again. So he’s repeats the cycle by introducing more new characters.
The result is he ends up with the huge theoretical cast of characters (the unofficial wikia lists 112 separate characters) but the majority of them hardly ever actually appear. I’d be happier if we had a smaller cast but they appeared on a semi-regular basis. Because then to move the story along, Jacques would have to develop the existing characters.
I agree with this. I love Pintsize and we hardly ever see him anymore. I feel like Marten got all these new friends and now poor Pintsize is abandoned at home in the apartment, surfing porn and humping the Roomba.
Part of the problem, I think, is that he sands the edges off his characters until they’re not as interesting anymore. Faye, Hannelore, and Marigold are in the soothing circle of friendship and aren’t as weird, angry, or troubled anymore. Tai, Emily, and Claire are headed in the same direction. Sven isn’t really a bad boy anymore. Wil the shy, unemployed poet has a girlfriend and a job. Momo looks like everyone else now. Marten’s mother getting together with Dora’s ex would fit this trend perfectly.
Yes, it’s character development, but it’s all development that moves in one direction and then stops. If I want to watch people getting older, duller, and more domestic, I have myself and my own friends to look to.
Part of the problem with Pintsize is that he would be easy to overuse and turn it into the Pintsize show, the same way Happy Days turned into the Fonzie show. He’s said before that he intentionally limits the amount of Pintsize in the comic. That being said, there’s only so much potential for a character like Pintsize, so I’m glad he stays in the background.
I agree with Tom Tildrum that the character arcs tend to go to normalcy, which is not as interesting. I think an application of the Chinese curse needs to occur for some of the characters.
The point is that’s ALL Pintsize is good for: cheap, one-off strips. There’s no interesting character development to happen there. Sure, he had that conversation with Momo about how the way he’s an anthro-pc is different from the way she works, but that’s ok, and they had the “Martin meets Pintsize” arc, but beyond that he’s just cheap joke filler. Which I am happy keeping to a minimum.
I agree. Pintsize is basically just a shtick character, almost as one-dimensional as Yelling Bird. He does get off some hilarious lines when he butts into a conversation, but too much of him detracts from the main business of the “real” characters’ interactions. I thought the strip from last week that I linked to above was actually pretty stupid. Now Momo, who apart from looking human, behaves more like a human, is a much more useful character.
SINFEST. Arggh. This used to be a webcomic and was often funny. Then the author got a stick up his ass that all men are evil and that has been the only topic he has talked about since. I gave up a year ago. Preachy doesn’t start to cover this drek.
I don’t read it everyday, sometimes I go for a week or three before I remember QC again, then catch up. But whenever Claire and her stupid brother are on stage, that is less room for Sven or Dora or Faye. Same goes for the library. Martin’s mother needs to give him $500k, which he’ll use to develop Coffeehouse of Doom franchises, thereby becoming involved with the “inner circle” again. That way Jacques can drop the library, drop the library characters (except Thai, of course), and proceed on with the story of the group dynamic.
Regardless of what happens though, I wish we had more bitchy Faye.
