breaking news: john egbert successfully leaves his room
It's the sixth day in a row this webcomic has given us new pages, and after a series of near impossible challenges, our main character has figured out how to leave his room on page 48. It's kind of a milestone moment, and definitely feels like we're kicking into gear to have things start Happening, as opposed to the tutorial level from before. I gasped when we were suddenly in the hallway - and what a hallway it is.
John's house being filled with harlequins hit me like a pie to the face. The harlequin art is good for real, and I love when people express their interests through their decorating choices, so these have me more excited to meet John's dad. I love the supportive notes he leaves for John on all his birthday gifts too, and he clearly got the Con Air poster just right, but what's up with him getting John a giant harlequin doll when John clearly doesn't like the harlequins in the house? For that matter, why doesn't John's dad care that John's uncomfortable with the harlequins? Maybe I see in part why John tries to avoid him so much, maybe we'll get a complicated father-son relationship to explore.
I was struck by this line on page 50: 'In a home, a FIREPLACE needs a fire, because that's what FIREPLACE is for. A fire BELONGS in a FIREPLACE, dammit, cata(ptcha)gorically, at all times, without exception.' It reminded me of this line from page 27: 'In a kid's yard, a tree without a tire swing is like a proper gentleman without a monocle. That is to say, HE CAN HARDLY BE CONSIDERED A TERRIBLY PROPER GENTLEMAN AT ALL.' It's interesting to me that we've already had two separate judgments on what a house 'should' be like. I don't know where it's going with this - if it's trying to satirize a cookie cutter suburban life, or something entirely different - but I'm definitely on the lookout for more instances of this.
I'm already noticing callbacks to updates from a few days ago. On page 32, it's noted that Colonel Sassacre's book 'could kill a cat if you dropped it', and on page 52 we learn that a volume of the book did actually kill a human in John's life. It makes me wonder if the author has a plan for where they're taking this comic, and if other throwaway lines are going to be relevant in the coming days.
