Questionable Content XX: XXX?

[BRC]

I think I've figured out why this, and other recent drunk/party scenes don't work compared to the ancient ones from the Coffee of Doom days.

In the old QC, the characters were friends. Much of the run time was spent with them doing mundane activities and bantering back and forth. That was the comic's bread and butter. Two or three characters passing the time by making conversation.

As a result, when they all got together and got drunk, that same dynamic would continue, only the characters are drunk now. They'd be goofier and more open with each other, they'd let their guards down a bit more, their snappy comebacks would get lost a bit in a boozy haze, but it would still be funny, because the interactions were all rooted firmly in these characters, who had been established and developed with enough subtly that they could bounce off each other in this way.

Consider this page I got to randomly:

https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=978

It's dialogue heavy, and very driven by the central joke, but each character's voices are established well enough that they come through even with dialogue that's just the characters telling a dumb joke together.

Dora adding details to this hypothetical physicist-porno sounds different from Faye adding details sounds different from Martin adding details. Hannalore doesn't really participate in the joke, that's not her character, but she's comfortable joking with her friends and comments on it in her own voice and very much from her own perspective. It works quite well. We know these characters, they're hanging out trying to amuse each other, and in the process, amuse us, the audience.


I did a quick click through of this party, which has been going on for about 20 pages, and I don't think I encountered a single instance of the characters hanging out trying to have fun with each other. All dialogue and action has been, in some way, purpose-driven. Ayo and Claire are trying to manage the party, Iris is sulking but doing whatever Willow says, Liz is rotating between her three character traits (Horrible Gremlin, Uptight Scientist, European). Clinton is being pretty true to himself, but at no instance do we have the characters just kind of hanging out and trying to have fun with each other in a way that the audience can appreciate. They get drunk and high, but we're not getting drunk and high with them.

The closest thing I think I've encountered as far as "Characters hanging out" is this
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5289
With Ayo and Claire's conversation. But even then it's a purpose-driven conversation, Claire is trying to understand Willow and Iris's dynamic.


And, like, there's nothing WRONG with purpose-driven comics. Even in the "Golden Age" they probably made up like 50% of all the individual pages, but those meandering banter-filled comics were not only what Jeph was best at writing, they also did a ton of work as far as defining the characters and establishing that yes, these people are friends who have a good time hanging out together.

As-is, everybody in this party is a collection of character traits and desires, but they don't feel like PEOPLE the way the older QC characters do.

That Seinfeldian "Nothing is happening but we're watching anyway" magic is gone.


While writing up this post, in the middle of the party we get this page:
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5285

It's a cutaway to martin, Faye, and bubbles. And it feels a lot more natural than the party sequence. Three characters with well-established personalities and voices hanging out and letting those dynamics and voices produce some jokes.


I'm not saying Jeph needs to go back to the same 5 characters in a coffee shop forever. I think he just needs to let his characters be a bit more grounded for a while and act like they're genuinely enjoying each other's company so he can develop their voices beyond a list of personality traits.