I’m just saying…

(From Questionable Content, by J. Jacques)

I’m not feelin’ it.

A lot of people felt this one close to home. Serious issue and all that. Suicide. You don’t have to tell me, I’ve been there. That issue’s been covered very well already. So in this, I’m speaking entirely about the story itself, as a story, and its effect on me.

The story was executed well. It felt abrupt and out of the blue (and laid on a little thick), but then again that was intentional. I remember when 500th strip came and Faye directly confronted Marten, which was a helluva shock. I was very interested, yes. I wanted to know what happened next. And yet, I wish I didn’t. Having Faye’s back story, and the root core of her issues revealed to us maybe be fine and dandy for some folks. Me, I prefer the mystery. The not knowing.

Faye’s issues define her as a character. During the course of the strip’s entire run, the core of Faye has been what has happened to her back home that she can’t speak about and how it causes her to be a tremendously snarky, yet loveable bitch. How she can’t get close to people, particularly men. Even on her debut, she said as much in not so many words. It was all there in subtext.

Faye’s issues define her as a character. We’ve been watching her interacting and living with Marten, the sexual tension, and the innocent flirtation. Her insecurity about her looks. Her jealousy whenever some other gal makes advances on Marten. Which comes from her Dad’s death in the way that her father was taken away from her, she would very much not like having another male figure in her life taken away.

We’ve been watching Faye and Marten and Dora and all the rest go on and on for a while now, with wacky hijinks and occasional dips into more serious topics, slowly we’ve seen Faye’s defensive exterior, her mask, and her reluctance to talk about her past, everything being chipped away at slowly with the aid of her friends. This has been the dramatic arc, really. Marten and Faye’s relationship was just the cover layer. What the story has really been getting at was gradually revealing who Faye is (Side note: I didn’t realize the very clever foreshadow in this strip until I reviewed myself for writing this).

And now that her trauma has been revealed to us, the mystery is dissolved. We have seen Faye in the raw. We have heard the tale of the worst days of her life and how she had to pull herself together. We’ve seen her fall and rise again. We’ve heard about her recovery.

We know who Faye is.

And as well done as this has been (lasting 500 strips, I mean… damn!), as well as it has been decompressed and told at a very realistic pace, as well as it has been drawn, as good as Questionable Content has been on every level… the mystery is gone. And I think so has the appeal for me.

Which really disappoints me. I loved QC. It was funny. I felt really rewarded whenever I actually understood one of their music references. Pintsize was very comical. Pizza Girl entertained me to no end merely as a concept. The supporting cast and incidental characters were all well fleshed out. It’s been fantastic.

But now I just feel like the story is over. And that’s a bummer. I mean, sure. There’s still more story to see. Like, how does this change the relationship between Marten & Faye? When will (if?) she break the story to Dora or Raven? Will they ever actually fall in love? There’s lots of territory to explore.

But still… I’m not feelin’ it.

It hasn’t had me and lost me. Not by any means. I would like to see where it goes from here, and hopefully it will be just as good as it always has been. So we’ll see I guess.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Webcomics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.