Check Displeased

Jack and Bitty start to warm up to each other, as Bitty stumbles onto Jack being emotionally vulnerable in Canadian French and then they awkwardly talk about it for about three panels. Is Bitty overstepping here, and if so, what does that mean? We also discuss Jack's infamous symbolically potent yellow gym shoes and which shounen ai conventions made him so incredibly tsundere. Plus Sekrit drags Beyonce back into it to dig up the metaphorical applications of the fourth single from her third studio album, which we start to see coalescing in this strip.

Read along with us: 1.10 Samwell vs. Yale - I

Bitty's mother is in some ways the most developed female character in Check Please, and with her introduction we finally meet a lady who's not just puking in the background. Is it a problem that we got 13 episodes into this before meeting a woman with a pulse? Also, it's kind of weird that Bitty calls her his "best friend," right? And it's definitely weird that he wants to take her to a frat house he doesn't even live at to bake a pie while naked college students get high in the next room, right? And it's super weird that the wife of a Georgia football coach would compare multiple Stanley Cup-winning hockey legend Bad Bob Zimmermann to Tim Tebow in 2013, right, like, that's not even a question. We get into all that, plus some discourse on tucking your jeans into your socks. Is that kinda gay?

Read along with us: 1.9 Family Weekend

A short episode about a mostly weightless little comic strip, in which Seko and Tomatey learn that hockey bros aren't very creative. We talk about Shitty's actual name, and why Jack doesn't have a nickname at all. Also, wait, why are Nazis funny? Lovers of autofiction, this installment is for you.

Read along with us: HS 3: Nicknames

All positive queer rep starts when you get someone out of bed at 4 in the morning and then drag them to an ice rink to experience repeated trauma, and ends when you propose to them at the site of the very trauma you forcibly inflicted. Maybe that's the moral of this comic? Hard to say! Just one of those things. Sekrit and Tomato discuss that, and also Lucille Ball again, and roller derby again, but it's no one's fault that formulaic sitcom writing and violent contact sports are relevant to this comic, okay. Also, this strip introduces us to the real star of Check, Please!: Jack's giant butt. (Runner up: Jack's wolf eyes.) Zimbits forever!

Read along with us: 1.8 Checking Clinic

Welcome to the Check Displeased tenth-episode anniversary special, an exploration of a strip where Bitty sits in front of a webcam for the vast majority of it. We get into why the comic doesn't give us any hockey action, and consider how much of Jack's chick-wheeling is a social construction that exists mostly in Ransom and Holster's heads. Actually, we talk about Jack a lot, for someone who's not even in this comic? Also: substance abuse in hockey, and why Bitty wants to play this extremely violent game in the first place.

Read along with us: 1.7 Assist!

Sekrit and Tomato continue their look at Jack's backstory, going panel by panel through the strip with a particular eye to how the story's being told. Is there any logic in Jack's circuitous path to the NHL, or is he just a just a bad planner? Was he actually an addict? Really trying to kill himself? How disappointed is his dad, actually? The comic never answers any of those questions, but this strip very much raises them -- and gave OMGCP fandom a ton to chew on in the process. Also, click for some hot content about early-2000s webcomic sensation Boy Meets Boy, arguably Check Please before Check Please was Check Please.

Read along with us: 1.6 The Hockey Prince

Catch Part 1/2 here.

Welcome to the multipart Hockey Prince bonanza. In this installment we learn -- and maybe our hero the Little Shit also learns? -- that Jack is such a bitch because he was a mentally ill teenage drug addict who thought his daddy didn't love him. This hard truth stands in contrast to a beautifully illustrated storybook presentation that draws on genre expectations to do its heavy lifting, and we are so impressed (and maybe still a little excited, you know, sexually?) that we gush about it for hours.

Read along with us: 1.6 The Hockey Prince

On this episode we find out that Bitty stans a legend: RKO Pictures chorus girl turned comedienne turned TV mogul Lucille Ball, whose influence penetrates the rest of Check, Please! to a near-inescapable degree. And also we meet the love interest’s dad or something, kind of. Plus we get into some vagaries of money in the US higher education system and do some Beyonce lyrics close reads. This episode is best enjoyed with some weight-loss gum!

Read along with us: 1.5 Bad Bob Zimmermann

This episode really tries our patience because it's standing between the beginning of the podcast and the first great OMGCP strip. After another two installments of what maybe you could call plot, the comic goes back to Ransom and Holster to teach us the meaning of the word “chirp.” Are chirping and flirting variations on the same theme, Bitty? Is Check Please a romcom? Is it a sports narrative? Why is the fat character in this strip the only fat character drawn in the entire comic? Also we talk about Tyler Seguin for some reason.

Read along with us: HS 2: Chirp

As Bitty goes to the Haus for the first time, we get into the place of magic realism in the comic, what is or isn't funny about sriracha (opinions are split), and compare way too many things to South Park. What kind of pot do you think Bitty would smoke? Isn't pie actually kind of overrated? But forget about that, because this is the strip where we meet iconic Check, Please! heroes Ollie and Wicky, future husbands, home-improvement buffs, and white collar job-havers. We also cover the symbolism of Bitty's wardrobe and the darkness in Shitty's grandiosity. Get psyched.

Read along with us: 1.4 The Haus