Ava Takes Over

As Ava's character stabilized and conquered her past as Anne's crony, she started to become my main character. That was a natural extension of what she already was - my favorite character!

But its was a problem.

Normally I just alter the story to fit the new "queen bee" when the main charactership shifts (and it often does, my original main character often turns out to be made of cardboard while a minor member of the supporting cast turns out to be full of juicy conflict). Here I arbitrarily decided not to. Still not sure why. . . I basically rationalized it as "It's named Teenage Sith Apprentice, not Twentysomething Jedi Apprentice!" (When this was written, Ava was actually 19. . . oops.)

Plus, I was messing up both girls' characters. Look at my earlier comics. . . they're often based on Anne being clever, albeit in ways that annoy the living daylights out of most other people. My more recent comics are mostly based on Anne's incompetencies. (They're easier. Unfortunately.)

And then there's Ava. Ava has already had one major personality transition at this point - she started out as just "the Jewish character," totally cardboard. If I needed her to speak or act, I had her say or do what Anne would in her place. Then I decided I wanted Ava to be at least slightly more moral than Anne. During all the edits I had to do to force that change on the strip, Ava's separate, distinct personality emerged.

During the time she was "taking over the strip," I always picked Ava to star. . .  even if the star role was way off base of what Ava would actually do. There was this one comic where the star outright lies and says not one true word from Panel One, Word One to Panel Three, Final Word.

I cast Ava in that role. Clearly a bad match.

I labeled it a "Joseph in Egypt" problem. . . because Ava was my favorite character, and Anne was supposed to be my main character. But I was giving Ava a lot more attention. Ultimately I solved the problem by separating Anne and Ava over the summer break. (Such an obvious solution you have to wonder why it took me weeks to figure out. Geez.)

Anyway, most of these following strips cast Ava as the main character, not Anne.

See what I mean about Anne growing dimmer as the story progresses? The Anne who tried to blow up her bedroom because her mother suggested starting her "bring order to the galaxy" agenda with it wouldn't have made this mistake.

Ava's son, a character mostly built on sarcasm, is going to have some real problems.

 "Chrometophobe" means "afraid of money."

The droid Ava is disguised as is her creepy chaperone, RE-189. She doesn't trust Nick and Nick doesn't trust her.

I wrote this one right after reading the first half of Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. (Or is that the other way around?) 

In case my bad artwork makes it hard to tell, the stuff on Anne's head in Panel Three is an upturned bowl of soup, not some weird hat.

Anne's eating habits generally range straight into insanity. And no, it didn't actually happen this time. . . Anne is just trying to cheer up Ava. (And she's failing!)

Doomie will attack anything that moves and many things that don't. This includes a few vicious assaults on trees. (Yes, really.)

I actually wrote this comic for Anne's 19th birthday on April 12th. It actually is kind of a return to when Anne would blow up a room her mother suggested that she put in order.