Cherry stared up at the popcorn ceiling.
She chewed on her lip.
She got out of bed and went to get her laptop, settling on the mattress with her legs crossed.
Tom had apparently launchedThursdayon MySpace during college and then moved it to a webcomics site. You could read the entire run ofThursdaythere, starting with Tom’s very first post.
Thursdaywas usually five panels long. At the beginning, the subject matter was all over the place. Campus life. Absurdities. Politics. There weren’t any recurring characters.
After a few dozen strips, a main character emerged. It was Tom, obviously. He drew himself square and hulking. Always wearing the same hooded sweatshirt. And almost completely silent. The character didn’t have a name.
The strips fell into more of a groove over time. The guy who was clearly Tom went through his life silently observing things and experiencing things. Meeting people. Finding himself in complicated, uncomfortable situations. None of the strips were funny on their own—but they built on each other. And sometimes they snuck up on you and made you laugh out loud. Once, Cherry found herself crying.
It would be hard to explain to someone whyThursdaywas great...
There was no plot. There weren’t any traditional jokes or sight gags. And Tom’s art was deceptively simple. Cherry knew he could draw realistically, but his comic lines were loose and cartoonish. There was aBloom Countyquality. And some early Disney vibes. (Like—whatif Berkeley Breathed had worked onSnow White?)Thursdaywas sweet. It was funny. It was sharp.
It wasgreat, undeniably. Ineffably. Cherry was falling deeper in love with Tom, panel by panel. She stayed up for hours, paging through his old strips... Tom’s main character graduated from college. He got a job. He started working for a railroad.
Cherry’s stomach started to tense as she got closer to the present. How autobiographicalwasthis comic?
She got to December.
Just before Christmas, Tom had posted an unprecedented extra-wide, single-panel strip. On the left side, he’d drawn a woman.
A very fat woman.
Wearing black jeans and a low-cut black sweater. Black high-heeled boots. A heart-shaped pendant around her neck.
Her breasts were extremely large.
Her hips and thighs were comical.
There was a curved line giving her a double chin and another curved line giving her a belly.
She had long dark hair and bangs, with slashes on her cheeks for dimples and three freckles on either side of her nose.
She was smiling with one side of her mouth.
She didn’t say anything.
Tom’s character was facing the woman, so the reader couldn’t see his face. There was a rare thought bubble hanging over his head:
“I just met the most beautiful girl.”
Chapter 26
“I just met the most beautiful girl.”
Cherry closed her laptop.
She lay on her back.
She realized she was crying when the tears ran into her ears and tickled.
Was it a joke?
Tom’s comics were usually driving toward a joke, though sometimes it took a while to get there. The main character’s thought bubbles were always sardonic when they appeared.
