I’ve already posted that I’m a total sap, and it’s the same thing prompting that admission again: yes, the comic strip 9 Chickweed Lane. Chickweed has always been in my top 25, slowly edging up into the top 10, until it has, lately, become my favorite strip. It’s always been very smart and observant, with three exceptionally strong female characters in the lead. Concurrent with its rising in my estimation is the almost complete jettisoning of the two older members of the clan to concentrate on young Edda, just now striking out on her own, and the truncated romance with her lifelong friend, the uber nerd Amos, who has lately cleaned up real good and is also striking out into the world.
The storylines over the last few months have dealt with them separately, encountering new people and almost falling into new relationships, failing for one reason or another. The new supporting cast has, in fact, grown so quickly it’s hard to keep track. The fact that these two are both artists – Edda is a dancer in her first ballet company, Amos is a musician studying at Julliard – only makes it richer for me.
But in the last two weeks, Edda’s gay roommate and his significant other have organized a Mission Impossible-style meet cute between the two, allowing the romance – short-circuited by bad communication and confused misunderstandings – to once again blossom, allowing me to consider, for a while at least, that it truly is a nice world to inhabit. It was exactly the balm a battered, raw soul needed at the end of this week.
Now… whether the strip will continue to grow from here, or grow stagnant, as have so many relationships in serial entertainment, once they are consummated – is up to creator Brooke McEldowney. And given the high degree of expectation I feel as I search out each new installment – I trust him implicitly.
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