Tuesday, June 21th
2005
The O.C and Comics
Ha! I made it for the Tuesday Update!
About two weeks ago I was going on and on about One Tree Hill, this
week, I gonna do the same for the Fox hit series, The O.C. Most of my
friends are either watching very little TV these days or they simply
miss the shows that I am so caught up with recently. Their loss.
Anyway, the particular episode which I watched is about how Seth Cohen,
upon discovering that his girlfriend, Alexis is lesbian, decided to draw
a comic book about himself and his predicament. His friends Ryan (also
the protagonist of The O.C) and this new guy on the series are helping
him with the plot of the story as well as the list of characters that
should appear in the comic book. Now Seth Cohen, as it turns out, is a
talented artist, and he does these wonderful sketches that amazes
everyone. Seth’s insistence is that his comic book is going to be
largely autobiographical, which means the people around him is going to
appear in his comic book (Ryan becomes this Superhero with
“fists-of-fury’), his ex-girlfriend Summer, who he hadn’t gotten along
well with of late, is also part of his ensemble of characters.
What the others did not know was that Seth had done a whole book of
sketches on Summer back when he still had feelings for her. Seth found
that it was inappropriate for anyone to see the sketchbook, especially
Summer’s current boyfriend. What eventually happened was that Summer
found the book and was moved by the sketches Seth did of her as a
superheroine. She decides to return the book to Seth, but Seth thought
it best that she keeps the book, the episode ended with Summer’s
feelings for Seth oddly rekindled.
It is not hard to understand why I chose to bring this episode up, for
SKOOKUM! is very much like Seth’s work. He sees the comic as an outlet
to vent his inexpressible frustrations, and he thinks he may be able to
answer some of these perplexing frustrations through his comic drawing.
More importantly, he makes it clear to all his friends around him that
they are going to be in his comic, re-drawn as superheroes. SKOOKUM!
does exactly that, but what I did not do, was to tell my friends who is
who. I just feel that it is not appropriate to reveal the secrets of
which friend inspired which character in the manga. Firstly, not all of
the characters in the manga are pleasant, and it would be disastrous if
one of my friends were to discover that an unsavory character was based
on his personality. Of course, there a few characters that were openly
based on classmates or schoolmates that I am no longer in contact with;
the existence of distance, offers the perfect excuse why I can use them,
disgrace them and not feel bad about it. Just know this, all of my
friends will inevitably have influence on the characters on SKOOKUM!
Wataru
Link of the month:
