Poor Cory. Got distracted by a long-distance relationship and blew his scholarship.
Watch Your Head is a little like Theater Lab, in that you get to see things you wouldn't see in the main stage productions and, however unconventional they may occasionally seem, they're always interesting and worth checking out.
Cory Thomas is willing to try things and to play with his characters in ways that don't necessarily follow the how-to-succeed-in-syndication script. He's not as freewheeling as a web comic might be, however, and there is a sense that he has to work within some constraints, which brings in some intangibles that make it different, like watching a guy walk a tightrope in a suit-and-tie rather than a leotard.
There are other syndicated cartoons in which characters change over time, but, in most cases, the changes are simply plot devices and not changes to the characters themselves. Dagwood stops taking the bus to work, but he's still running late to the carpool and the majority of the strips are same old Dagwood sleeping on the couch, reading in bed, getting fired by his boss and eating things.
But at Watch Your Head, the changes are more fundamental and are a pretty good reflection of how life at college really works. (Watch Your Head began with a realistic freshman year but is now in Comic Strip Time so that academic years start and end but everything takes place somewhere in sophomore or junior year -- they are no longer wide-eyed freshmen, but they're not anticipating graduation, either. It works.)
For instance, you have Robin, the romantic interest, who started as a cool, collected Halle Berry type beauty, but then didn't just put on the Freshman 15 but maybe the Freshman 50, revealed some serious issues with her mother and was in turn revealed to be an emotionally needy roommate and one of those people who you still like but who is, really, kind of a pain in the ass.
Except to Cory, who maintains the crush on her, and the image of her, that he developed during Freshman Orientation all that time ago. Which is also pretty realistic.
And Quincy entered Oliver Otis University as the happy-go-lucky womanizing slacker, a Good Time Charlie who seemed determined to prove the validity of the old joke that the tailor's son can be well-dressed for nothing, the barber's son can be well-groomed for nothing and the preacher's son can be good for nothing.
But somehow this son of a preacher-man unexpectedly got religion and renounced his wicked ways. Sort of. Quincy is the king of the back-sliders, and he may have walked down the aisle to give himself up to Jesus, but if he met the Woman at the Well, he'd be asking her for her phone number.
Which is how I remember spiritual rebirths in college.
So now Cory, who is the ultimate nerd grinder honor student type, has come down to earth and will have to do a little scrambling to keep himself in ramen and Skittles. I'll be interested in seeing where Cory-the-Cartoonist takes Cory-the-Character, because the shift offers opportunities to delve into the character himself a little deeper and a chance for some fun plot lines that weren't there when Cory simply functioned as the POV doppelganger.
For instance, I could tell him all about academic probation, as could his roommate Jason. But I don't know that it would do him any good.
I'm reminded of a friend of one of my sons, a top scholar in high school who had a nice ride to a good engineering school but then got swept up in pledging and other campus delights and ended up getting pink slips at mid-term of his first semester.
For those of us destined, in the terminology of Shannon Sharpe, to graduate not summa cum laude or even magna cum laude but "thank you lawdy," pink slips are simply a reminder that it's time to open the books. Or maybe to go to the bookstore and purchase them.
But it's like a renewal notice: You don't have to do it right now, but you need to put it on your radar. And you should probably start showing up for class so that, when you go talk to the prof about your grades, your face will at least seem familiar.
For my son's normally over-achieving buddy, however,a deficiency notice was uncharted territory and it threw him for a loop. He'd never been told his work wasn't good enough, and he didn't know how to handle it.
So he handled it by spinning his wheels in a complete panic and flunking out.
I don't imagine Cory's going to handle it a whole lot better, and I can't wait to see him try.
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