There’s Something About Marie…

I’m going to (exceptionally) break with the usual form and talk a little bit about the character Marie from the strip. With that last strip, you may have noticed that I have been laying it on a little thick with the drama. What’s up with this? Is BF! losing its sense of humor?

No, not at all. The thing about Marie is an exception. And I blame Scott Kurtz (bless his talented soul!) for it.

You see, I’m an avid listener of the Webcomics Weekly podcast. A few months ago, I was listening to an old podcast where he was stating that drama was much easier to do than humor. As the conversation between the group went on, he suddenly interrupted everyone. “Oh, shit, guys, just got an email: my grandmother just died!” And naturally, all his friends on the podcast were instantly shocked and immediately expressed their sympathy.

But that wasn’t true after all. It was just a stunt to prove his point: that anyone can write drama, but not everyone can do humor. To me, though, that stunt was to drama what “knock-knock” jokes are to humor. Low quality and easy to make. Also, they wear off; you can’t do them too much, or you’re just predictable. So then I set out to see if I could do a tiny bit of drama in BF, and the Marie storyline is the result of that. I can’t say whether things will end well for her, but I can tell from your collective reaction that you hope so. Clearly, you’ve all grown very attached to her (not something I expected when she was first drawn…). But in the end, this strip isn’t about her, so it may be a bit before we see her again.

And now, we return you to your regularly scheduled mirth and mischief.

–Jaycee