(From College Roomies from Hell. Click on the thumbnail for full sized reunion special!)
There are six characters who I consider to be the College Roomies from Hell core cast. Mike, Marsha, Dave, Margaret, Roger and April. Somewhere along the way, Campos 'promoted' Blue and Diana to main cast status (along with... well, Fluffy, but Fluffy doesn't get to be in the ad banner). But these are the six that have been at the forefront since... well... since.
And they're all in the same room. At the same time. Sitting around the same table.
They're all. In the same room. Sitting at the same table.
I don't know when the last time that happened was. I have a sneaking suspicion they haven't all been together since 2003. I mean, there was the whole plotline on the island, and Margaret going off to the woods, and the Roger thing, and the Spa Treatment thing, and April's continued descent into evil, and....
You know. Stuff.
The dynamic between the six cast members (I hesitate to call them friends) is the core of the comic. We don't need to have all of them together -- these past couple of years have been all about that dynamic -- but to get them together involves a kind of renewal.
Plus, there's now five people at that table who hate April. I'm hoping for bloodshed, myself!
I enjoy praising CRFH.
When I first started reading College Roomies from Hell I always thought that Maritza was channelling the genius of Eugene Ionesco, who happens to be my favorite playwright ever. The days of caressing a circle and watching it turn vicious are fewer and further between these days -- a lot of long-term plots and plot development going on instead, which isn't bad at all, just different -- but even now it's nice to see that Fidel Castro in a thong gets his due.
It's still my absolute favorite webcomic out there.
That, and Mike is my hero.
"They're all. In the same room. Sitting at the same table."
And they're all wearing, essentially, different colors from the color wheel. Like my primary six characters do. Crap. I mean, the distribution is different from mine, but ... Crap. Has she been doing this all along and I never noticed (or worse, noticed subconsciously)? I'm going to have to reread the archives now.
Oh, wait, there's no yellow here. Phew. But I think I'll reread the archives anyway.
Five? I think Dave doesn't really care one way or the other. Marsha is trying to stay April's friend because she's just too nice for her own good, and Margaret probably doesn't hate April since now everyone knows everything (supposedly) and she doesn't have to worry about April backstabbing Marsha (or trying to blackmail her). In fact, the only person who truly detests April is Mike. Well, and maybe April herself. *grin*
Still, it would be nice to see the gang just staying put for a while...
Rob
You know, comments here keep saying that about Sluggy Freelance too.
I'm reminded of Moss Hart's autobiography Act One which focuses largely on his first collaboration with George S. Kaufman. At one point one of the money and/or production people makes the offhand remark to Hart that "it's such a noisy play." Hart and Kaufman decide to insert a new scene at the beginning of one act that consists of two characters just sitting and talking to each other, and audiences start liking the play a lot better.
Teeeechnically, I don't believe we've actually seen The Whole Cast all together since September 2002, and the end of "It Had To Be You." (http://www.crfh.net/d/20020914.html - last panel.) They'd mostly been running around dealing with one another individually after that.
Its as if the last three years have been the aftermath of a spectacular destructive force and only now, only just now, have they finally managed to recooperate and get together.
If this were any other webcomic I could imagine the next few strips being a roundtable discussion and airing of demons (mentally and maybe physically). But this is CRFH. It wont be quite as normal as that.
Paul: I don't think you need to worry about the colour coding - it's not a colour wheel thing, it's just a reference to the movie Reservoir Dogs. So is the opening line, which I'm pretty sure is a quote from the scene where the characters meet for the first time. (I suspect the writer has also noticed how long it's been since they were all together in one room.)