My dad's a journalist and we subscribed to at least three daily newspapers and it wasn't in any of them, although I ran across it in a newspaper when we were on vacation once.
I misremembered the gag as being from Robot Man and Monty.
So the core conceit of Perfect Ballet Piano Goddess and her Besotted Dullard Loveslave gets a zesty little twist of despair: he's probably her Loveslave because he has never received affection from any other human being
She used to be WAY less perfect, Amos used to be a LOT weirder (derogatory) and went from "girls find him disgusting and creepy in high school" to "oh no he's hot" in college.
The "oh no he's hot" part was initially handled well - he was a weird guy who'd found a place where his specific weirdness
His math, science, philosophy, literary, and religious nerdery was increasingly downplayed and his musical obsession became more predominant, in the way of a man reliving his own Juliard youth. Amos was depicted studying and practicing something like 18 hours a day.
For a long time McEldowney went out of his way to insist, to demonstrate, that Amos and Edda worked very VERY hard but because their field is The Arts their work is dismissed as frivolous.
In that kind of setting, Amos being a super sexy super genius _makes sense_ because he's passionate...
hard working, and creative. Was it a little self-insert-y? Yes, obviously, of course, but it still often felt balanced in part because McEldowney used Amos' cluelessness well.
Women threw themselves at him, sometimes literally, and he just... didn't pick up on it.
excepting Edda and a few high school crushes (notably Mary). The way he's written is often coded as queer, although not so much for the past decade or so.
But yes, Edda and Juliet and Gran _are his family_ in a lot of ways. McEldowney keeps revising their relationship to make them more and more
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https://www.gocomics.com/9chickweedlane/1993/12/05
My dad's a journalist and we subscribed to at least three daily newspapers and it wasn't in any of them, although I ran across it in a newspaper when we were on vacation once.
I misremembered the gag as being from Robot Man and Monty.
The "oh no he's hot" part was initially handled well - he was a weird guy who'd found a place where his specific weirdness
His math, science, philosophy, literary, and religious nerdery was increasingly downplayed and his musical obsession became more predominant, in the way of a man reliving his own Juliard youth. Amos was depicted studying and practicing something like 18 hours a day.
In that kind of setting, Amos being a super sexy super genius _makes sense_ because he's passionate...
Women threw themselves at him, sometimes literally, and he just... didn't pick up on it.
He came across almost as asexual
But yes, Edda and Juliet and Gran _are his family_ in a lot of ways. McEldowney keeps revising their relationship to make them more and more