Bile Pt. 2: This Might Be A Cheap Shot
This should be the last time I pick on Tim Buckley for a little while.
I read Ctrl+Alt+Del. Sometimes I smile at it, like during this awkward moment.
But I don't really understand why Ethan, the main character, still has a fiancee. Or a best friend. Or a job. Or a life outside a mental institution.
Take the latest sequence, where he keeps a scorpion against his fiancee Lilah's wishes, it gets free and it puts his best friend Lucas' girlfriend in the hospital. Admittedly, Lilah does withhold sex thanks to this, which seems to be her usual response. But that seems like a very mild reaction to putting the lives of everyone in the house in danger... for at least the second time. And this is pretty typical. Ethan does some utterly outrageous thing that would drive most people to homicide, and whatever comeuppance he receives is out of all proportion to the offense.
For a while it seemed like he was in danger of growing up, but we're well past that phase now.
These days, Ethan reminds me of "Big Head" from the original Mask comic-book miniseries (and not the sanitized Jim Carrey movie). That character's model was Warner Brothers cartoons, while Ethan's is Tycho and Gabe, but in both cases they're icons of over-the-top cartoon violence dropped into a real world where people can actually die. Their antics are therefore humorous, but also kind of horrifying (Panel 6).
I read Ctrl+Alt+Del. Sometimes I smile at it, like during this awkward moment.
But I don't really understand why Ethan, the main character, still has a fiancee. Or a best friend. Or a job. Or a life outside a mental institution.
Take the latest sequence, where he keeps a scorpion against his fiancee Lilah's wishes, it gets free and it puts his best friend Lucas' girlfriend in the hospital. Admittedly, Lilah does withhold sex thanks to this, which seems to be her usual response. But that seems like a very mild reaction to putting the lives of everyone in the house in danger... for at least the second time. And this is pretty typical. Ethan does some utterly outrageous thing that would drive most people to homicide, and whatever comeuppance he receives is out of all proportion to the offense.
For a while it seemed like he was in danger of growing up, but we're well past that phase now.
These days, Ethan reminds me of "Big Head" from the original Mask comic-book miniseries (and not the sanitized Jim Carrey movie). That character's model was Warner Brothers cartoons, while Ethan's is Tycho and Gabe, but in both cases they're icons of over-the-top cartoon violence dropped into a real world where people can actually die. Their antics are therefore humorous, but also kind of horrifying (Panel 6).
Posted at
8:40 AM
1 Comments:
I realized a long while ago that I was able to reasonably enjoy Ctrl+Alt+Del as long as Ethan wasn't around.
It isn't that I simply hate the concept of a crazy, zany character - but Ethan fails as one, for two reasons. First off, his craziness seems forced and inconsistent, and largely more about feeding along whatever joke the strip wants to tell at any moment.
Secondly, though, is combining his absurdity with being the author's wish-fulfillment stand-in. If he was a side character who randomly did ridiculous things, that would be fine - but no, he's the main focus, with an essentially perfect life. Like you said, what does Lilah actually see in him? Why does Lucas stay friends with him? Why in the world hasn't he been fired?
I've seen that sort of thing in other comics, but I don't think there is a single other character out there that comes close to Ethan's level.
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