Comic #925: Friendgame (Patreon)

I really felt like making a wholesome comic about playing with friends, and then happened to spend an evening with some friends where we basically shit-talked each other and this idea came to me.

This comic is in a way a spiritual successor to #801. The themes in the comic are basically identical just inversed. In the first comic, the setup shows the toxicity of the friends group, while the punchline compares them to pugs. In this version, the setup shows the toxicity of pugs while the punchline juxtaposes it with a friend group.

Even though it's mostly a joke, I still wanted to get across that hostile awful feeling you sometimes get with toxic pugs, and compare it to shit-talking with your friends. On the surface they might look similar, but the intention and the relationships are different, and make for opposite experiences.

I wanted it to be clear that Narya's reception of the insults in the final panel is totally positive compared to those same words in the first two panels. That pretty much relied on his expression. You can imagine how different the comic would have felt if Narya was sad, or surprised, or angry, in the final panel. It would have still worked, I think it would have been funny as well, but it would lack that wholesome quality that I wanted. To me the joke is not that his friend's reactions in the final panel are unexpected to him, but that he feels joy and happiness despite them. It's very relatable to me. I'll take a bricked key with my friends over a timed key with a pug any day.

Also, if you've read enough of my commentaries you've probably heard me mention how much I like cyclical comics where the start and the end are the same but have different contexts. This is another good example of one.