Check, Please! (Volume 1: #Hockey!)
It's always slightly bizarre to encounter a canon through osmosis, and then experience the actual thing. You get expectations colliding with reality, and you also get pieces of a puzzle falling into place. (Oh, this is who those nicknames belong to! Oh, this is where that soulmate meme comes from!) And in a way, it feels like it opens up the world of the fanworks to you, like you finally have the primer to interpret them.
Check, Please! is a webcomic by Ngozi Ukazu. It isn't a canon I planned to get into, but when I saw Volume 1 at the library, I grabbed it. These days I rarely have the patience to load who knows how many webpages, but I love being able to leaf through a physical book.
Eric Bittle (aka "Bitty") is a gay hockey player, who loves baking pies and hates being checked (ie getting hit by opponents). This first volume covers his freshman and sophomore years at college, particularly the friendships with his teammates, and his growing feelings for his captain.
It's a pleasant and easy read. It feels like a slice of life comic, threaded through with hockey, rather than having the competitive focus of, say, a sports manga.
The weirdest thing is breezing through two years of his life in an afternoon, versus following the webcomic in real time. It feels accelerated, like that Futurama episode with the time skips. Binge reading has its drawbacks: there's not as much room to digest, speculate, or anticipate. Living with the characters for two years would allow a deeper engagement with them.
The Check, Please! story is a transmedia experience: not only the webcomic, but also a Twitter account, which contains character and plot developments that fit in between or run alongside chapters. The tweets are helpfully included at the back of the book.
Volume 2 is scheduled for release in 2020.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.
Check, Please! is a webcomic by Ngozi Ukazu. It isn't a canon I planned to get into, but when I saw Volume 1 at the library, I grabbed it. These days I rarely have the patience to load who knows how many webpages, but I love being able to leaf through a physical book.
Eric Bittle (aka "Bitty") is a gay hockey player, who loves baking pies and hates being checked (ie getting hit by opponents). This first volume covers his freshman and sophomore years at college, particularly the friendships with his teammates, and his growing feelings for his captain.
It's a pleasant and easy read. It feels like a slice of life comic, threaded through with hockey, rather than having the competitive focus of, say, a sports manga.
The weirdest thing is breezing through two years of his life in an afternoon, versus following the webcomic in real time. It feels accelerated, like that Futurama episode with the time skips. Binge reading has its drawbacks: there's not as much room to digest, speculate, or anticipate. Living with the characters for two years would allow a deeper engagement with them.
The Check, Please! story is a transmedia experience: not only the webcomic, but also a Twitter account, which contains character and plot developments that fit in between or run alongside chapters. The tweets are helpfully included at the back of the book.
Volume 2 is scheduled for release in 2020.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.