UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

9 thoughts on “542 – Catching Up”

  1. Keith

    Some friction, but yeah. IRL, I’d like these two…they should have kids. 😉

    1. Dawn

      I might have to draw out what their kid would look like. First thought is that their kid would look like Ongo Gablogian from “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”

    2. Scarsdale

      He’s pushing 60, she’s maybe 30, more likely less. Chuck is most likely shooting blanks, and besides, he’s talking to her like a baby sister than a love interest.

      1. Keith

        Up in these hills, sometimes family is all y’gots. 😉

  2. ConcordBob

    It is really hard to have a favorite character, as there are so many good ones. But I think Rosa is my favorite. Chuck is a good accomplice in sneaking work, but not much for romance. Uugh.

  3. Otaku

    I mean, if they don’t have at least an inkling of what’s going down, I’m actually disappointed in Clearstream. If anything, I’m starting to wonder if they caught on and realized “Wait, we can use this.”

    Because of course they can. 😉

  4. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    I’m way ahead of you – I’ve been waiting for you to catch up. From November 2020:
    I would hope for nothing less – her and Chuck have the potential for a great deal of positive mischief.
    Speaking of which, I received the email notifying me that my order for the NSFW “Chuck and Rosa Finally Do It” (age verification required) limited edition hardcover is going to be delayed due to the pandemic. I think it’s really cool that you’ll be adding some additional stretch goal goodies when it ships – thanks for all your story and art.
    As for the inscription, ” We owe it all to you ” will be sufficient.

  5. Crazyman

    Partners in crime! 😈

  6. TKG

    A crime so perfect she went full on wall-eye!

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542 – Catching Up
Posted on April 9, 2025 by Dawn

Grit, true or otherwise…

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Clint
This week’s comic features the long-awaited return of Zeke, or at least what’s left of him. No, we didn’t feed him into a wood chipper, but hey, we figured a little suspense never hurts. Wood chippers hurt, though. I mean, not that I would know from personal experience, I’m just guessing. I think it’s a good guess. Mentioning wood chippers actually serves as a roundabout tie-in to the western I was going to talk of this week, True Grit. True Grit is another John Wayne headlined film that originally premiered July 4, 1969. Funky timing, eh? Just over two weeks later Neil Armstrong would be getting moon dust on his boots, and less than a month after that half a million people would pack themselves into a little outdoor arts & music festival called Woodstock. Some at the time held True Grit up as a voice of simpler, conservative mores in the face of upheaval and change, especially with their patron saint The Duke at the helm, but I don’t think the filmmakers ever meant it to be. They were just making a movie. As a matter of fact, the script (adapted from a novel of the same name) was typed up by a lady named Marguerite Roberts who had been blacklisted by HUAC during the McCarthy era. Someone who used to be a card carrying member of the American Communist Party had her name attached to a western, which years later still made studios reluctant to touch it. Who got the movie greenlit? John Wayne himself. And yes, he knew about Marguerite’s past, but after looking over the screenplay he declared it the best he’d ever read, and wrangled the film into production. There was quite an ensemble together by the end, including a young Dennis Hopper and Robert Duvall (Duvall still squinted, though), and Wayne’s character was not exactly a shining hero archetype, unless an aging, greedy, alcoholic bounty hunter (okay, Deputy U.S. Marshal, to-may-to to-mah-to) with an eyepatch is your idea of shiny. Whether or not that’s the case, it was the Academy’s idea of an Oscar performance, and Wayne received his one and only Best Actor award for his performance as Marshal Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn. Frankly, I think some of his other roles were much stronger (*cough*The Searchers*cough*), so it probably was a case of them wanting to honor him before he stopped being able to make movies. Even at the time it was fairly incredible that he was making movies, particularly ones with any kind of physical activity required, since the man had an entire damn lung removed in 1964 as part of cancer surgery. After that, who knew how long he might have had left? Sort of like how Return of the King wasn’t really better than Fellowship of the Ring, but the Academy waited until the end to give the nods… well, except that Peter Jackson wasn’t suffering lung cancer. The person who really steals the show in True Grit, in my opinion, is Kim Darby as the young, obsessed heroine Mattie Ross who sets everything in motion in order to track down her father’s killer. At times she’s the naive girl who really is in as much danger as the men with her insist, but at other times she’s a complete force of nature, to the point where if she didn’t have the training and experience gap she’d probably be the scariest, most relentless bounty hunter of all. It’s not a movie that held me riveted from start to finish the way The Searchers or Red River did, but it’s worth a look, including the famous exchange at the end: Mattie Ross: You are too old and fat to be jumping horses. Rooster Cogburn: Well, come see a fat old man some time! And he waves his hat with a smile, and jumps the fence on his horse. Never mind that in actuality a stuntman had to do the actual fence jumping, it’s still a fitting milestone in the career of The Duke. Oh, and that wood chipper tie-in? While checking out IMDB for this blog I discovered that the Coen brothers are doing a remake of True Grit, scheduled for release in December of this year! If you don’t know, the Coen brothers are the guys behind Miller’s Crossing, The Big Lebowski, No Country For Old Men, and a host of other memorable films. One, Fargo, being particularly memorable for feeding a body into a wood chipper. There you go, full circle. I’m actually really excited about this. If you watch the original film, it pulls a lot of quirky, stylized dialog directly out of the novel, and the Coen brothers love their quirky, stylized dialog. Plus, No Country For Old Men had some western motifs to it, but I really want to see what they’ll do with a full on period piece. Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin are already in the cast and should do admirable jobs with the material, all that remains to be seen is if their Mattie can tie it together with the same verve Miss Darby did.