Check Displeased

Jack and Bitty start to warm up to each other, as Bitty stumbles onto Jack being emotionally vulnerable in Canadian French and then they awkwardly talk about it for about three panels. Is Bitty overstepping here, and if so, what does that mean? We also discuss Jack's infamous symbolically potent yellow gym shoes and which shounen ai conventions made him so incredibly tsundere. Plus Sekrit drags Be...

Bitty's mother is in some ways the most developed female character in Check Please, and with her introduction we finally meet a lady who's not just puking in the background. Is it a problem that we got 13 episodes into this before meeting a woman with a pulse? Also, it's kind of weird that Bitty calls her his "best friend," right? And it's definitely weird that he wants to take her to a frat house...

A short episode about a mostly weightless little comic strip, in which Seko and Tomatey learn that hockey bros aren't very creative. We talk about Shitty's actual name, and why Jack doesn't have a nickname at all. Also, wait, why are Nazis funny? Lovers of autofiction, this installment is for you. Read along with us: HS 3: Nicknames

All positive queer rep starts when you get someone out of bed at 4 in the morning and then drag them to an ice rink to experience repeated trauma, and ends when you propose to them at the site of the very trauma you forcibly inflicted. Maybe that's the moral of this comic? Hard to say! Just one of those things. Sekrit and Tomato discuss that, and also Lucille Ball again, and roller derby again, bu...

Welcome to the Check Displeased tenth-episode anniversary special, an exploration of a strip where Bitty sits in front of a webcam for the vast majority of it. We get into why the comic doesn't give us any hockey action, and consider how much of Jack's chick-wheeling is a social construction that exists mostly in Ransom and Holster's heads. Actually, we talk about Jack a lot, for someone who's not...

Sekrit and Tomato continue their look at Jack's backstory, going panel by panel through the strip with a particular eye to how the story's being told. Is there any logic in Jack's circuitous path to the NHL, or is he just a just a bad planner? Was he actually an addict? Really trying to kill himself? How disappointed is his dad, actually? The comic never answers any of those questions, but this st...

Welcome to the multipart Hockey Prince bonanza. In this installment we learn -- and maybe our hero the Little Shit also learns? -- that Jack is such a bitch because he was a mentally ill teenage drug addict who thought his daddy didn't love him. This hard truth stands in contrast to a beautifully illustrated storybook presentation that draws on genre expectations to do its heavy lifting, and we ar...

On this episode we find out that Bitty stans a legend: RKO Pictures chorus girl turned comedienne turned TV mogul Lucille Ball, whose influence penetrates the rest of Check, Please! to a near-inescapable degree. And also we meet the love interest’s dad or something, kind of. Plus we get into some vagaries of money in the US higher education system and do some Beyonce lyrics close reads. This episo...

This episode really tries our patience because it's standing between the beginning of the podcast and the first great OMGCP strip. After another two installments of what maybe you could call plot, the comic goes back to Ransom and Holster to teach us the meaning of the word “chirp.” Are chirping and flirting variations on the same theme, Bitty? Is Check Please a romcom? Is it a sports narrative? W...

As Bitty goes to the Haus for the first time, we get into the place of magic realism in the comic, what is or isn't funny about sriracha (opinions are split), and compare way too many things to South Park. What kind of pot do you think Bitty would smoke? Isn't pie actually kind of overrated? But forget about that, because this is the strip where we meet iconic Check, Please! heroes Ollie and Wicky...

The coaches! Boy, did they impact the plot of Check, Please! Technically we meet them in the strip named after them, but as Sekrit and Tomato discuss, it depends on how you define the confusing concepts of "meet" and "them." Also: Is this where the plot begins? What's the difference between meanness and criticism in fandom? Plus we talk about Doonesbury , which is basically the same thing as Check...

After following the main plot for two entire strips, it's time to take a detour into side material that isn't part of the actual comic, or is it? This episode has it all: talk of paratexts, a definition of gesamtkunstwerk , and personal anecdotes from the lives of your podcasters. Neither the protagonist nor the most important character is in this strip, but we find a way to make it worthwhile, ma...

On the second installment of Check Displeased, Tomato and Sekrit chat a little more about 1.1 in light of recent comic updates, speculate on how many eggs a person should eat, try to figure out who or what is Jonathan Toews, and get super psyched to meet The Boys. Would you Get Married For The Boys? You wouldn't know it from this strip, but, the protagonist of this comic would! To the Most Importa...

On the first episode of Check Displeased, Tomato and Sekrit give background on the webcomic that's been haunting them for four to seven years, meet the story's protagonist, and start figuring out how to make a podcast. Read along with us: 1.1 Eric Bittle