CSotD: The Born-again Identity
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"Watch Your Head" is one of the most character-driven strips out there, with a cast of a half-dozen students at fictional Oliver Otis University, a thinly disguised stand-in for artist Cory Thomas's alma mater, Howard.
It's not clear what year everyone is, since they are in Comic Strip Time and, like comic strip students everywhere, begin each fall as neither Freshmen nor Seniors. But they do have summers with jobs, parents, hometown honeys and the other distractions of the season, and return to campus changed, or at least with fresh variations on their old issues.
The latest change has come in the form of Quincy embracing, rather than fleeing from, his preacher-father's religious convictions. The main complication with this is that Quincy has spent his life in full hound-dog mode and it's not surprising that he cites Barry White as a cultural reference, since he has, no doubt, a full collection of Barry White music, along with candles and low-wattage light bulbs.
The secondary problem is that he is trying to convince himself of his new-found sincerity by convincing his roomie Omar, who could not be less sympathetic to organized or even disorganized religion in any form on any level. He would probably have better luck going down to the lake on campus and attempting to part the waters.
"Watch Your Head" has largely flown under the radar, which is a shame, but which is likely due to the degree to which it is character-driven: You do have to read it regularly and become familiar with the characters before individual strips make a lot of sense. As with "continuity strips" like Judge Parker and Rex Morgan, MD, you can't just jump in and out at your whim and get much out of it.
There are any number of web strips that have assembled very loyal fans based on that element of being clued in, of "getting" what casual visitors don't. The most successful of these have a cult-like following who pay nothing to read the strip but invest massively in the books, original art and random ephemera surrounding the strip.
Print newspapers, alas, are lucky today if they can inspire half that loyalty in the form of people reading and "getting" the columnists on their editorial page, never mind their syndicated comics.
But "Watch Your Head" is worth bookmarking and following.
Even if you're "Canadian."
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