1-31-2023Alright. We have more of Edda and Mary.
Mary was Edda's best female friend in grade school and high school. She and Amos vied for primary best friend role. Not, you know, not directly - they didn't actually compete for the role - but Edda treated one with more respect than the other here and there. Edda and Mary took dance lessons, including ballet, together. Mary also plays the flute. I don't know if they've performed together, but it's another thing they have in common.
One thing that young Edda did NOT do was EVER tell Amos to stop actively stop stalking Mary, something that Mary actively, repeatedly, consistently stated that she did not welcome and that she wanted to end. This despite how much influence Edda had with Amos. Amos' stalking of Mary pretty much only ended when he and Edda became involved and he left for Julliard.
Edda and Mary went their separate ways when Edda left school early to join the Ballet Corp in New York City. They apparently stayed loosely in touch for a while because at one point Mary came to NY and stayed with Edda and Amos in their apartment while she was in town. Edda was worried that Amos would be distracted and want to bone Mary, while Amos claimed to not remember who Mary even was.
Other than that brief trip, however, we haven't seen them interacting. It hasn't even been hinted at. In yesterday's strip we see that Mary
didn't even know that she'd had children, a high risk pregnancy that involved a hospital stay and rushed surgery. She didn't know what Edda did for a living. And Edda somehow doesn't know that Mary has been married not once but twice. She didn't get invitations to any weddings? It feels like Edda is recreating the relationship that Juliette has with her gal pal Rosie, who she apparently only ever speaks to (via phone) when she wants to feel better about herself by bragging and feeling Rosie's jealousy.
I want to pause a moment here, I want to point out that Amos contacted Mary before he and Edda got engaged. He wasn't sure if he actually loved Edda. The only person he'd ever felt besotted over had been Mary, so he called her up. They agreed to meet. He suggested they date. She agreed. He projectile vomited. They each accused the other of betraying Edda (he for suggesting it, her for agreeing to it). Amid the vomit, Amos decided that he actually was in love with Edda after all.
One more thing to point out: Edda's dad ruined her life by generally being a self absorbed asshole but specifically by cheating on her mom (and her) numerous times. Edda is understandably traumatized by this, even if her reactions in general are a little extreme at times. Is "ruined her life" really accurate when she grew up in a supportive, loving home with a stable parent? When she never had to worry about having enough to eat, about payments for utilities, about losing her car or her home? When she had access to a high quality private education, foreign language classes, ballet and other dance classes, piano and viola instruction, judo classes? Maybe "ruined her life" isn't accurate but he did fuck her up pretty badly.
Now that I've poured out that little infodump let's discuss this strip.
1) They're
relatively young for Mary to have been married and divorced twice. It absolutely happens! But it comes across as, I don't know, Mary getting hitched really young the first time; as something she rushed in to without much thought.
2) Mary reveals that her first spouse had two affairs, which really sucks. That's a bad thing to go through. And with her second marriage it was Mary who had the affair. And that's interesting, you know? Is she just an affair person, and her first husband simply beat her two it? Did she have her own affair because she was insecure or afraid? Was she married when Amos made his little proposal? I don't remember, although she WAS in a relationship, I believe. But this takes her from "victim" or "prey" to "predator." We see that as the revelation that she had an affair segues directly into her asking after Amos... her former best friend's husband. Ordinarily it would be a pretty innocuous question. In this case, though, it's apparently a way to scent around for clues that he's eager to put his dick anywhere he can. And the WORDING! "My first husband had two affairs... and with the second I had one." That's not how people talk! "My first husband had two affairs... but I'm the one who had the affair in my second marriage." That's how people talk! And it should be said over two panels!
3) Edda jumps to that conclusion, at least, when she states that he's "affair proof." Frankly, if I was catching up with an old friend and she responds to me asking about her husband with "lol he won't fuck you" I'd be, you know, a little offended. But hey. Edda may fuck on top of tables in diners, and may engage in a little consensual toe fucking on a city sidewalk in front of numerous lookers-on, but she draws the line at someone thinking about her husband's boner.
4) "It's always best not to look disappointed when you're told that" is a long and tortured way of saying "oh, don't look so disappointed," an actual thing that actual humans might say. And, again, this is either a pretty big leap on Edda's part concerning a mild inquiry about her spouse and thus a pretty big insult to Mary OR Mary's a gross weirdo Edda should walk away from permanently.
This strip illustrates 2 core dynamics of the comic, namely:
1)
Edda has no real friends. She has Xiulan, who we rarely see actually talking to or interacting with any more; and she has Seth, who she objectifies and is weird about. We know that Seth (and Mark?) babysits her kids but we RARELY see any actual interactions. Edda orbits Amos and that's it. To be fair, he orbits her with no other stars in his galaxy. But Edda seems to really be replicating her mother's social dynamic: isolated, no friends outside of her immediate family. Fernanda Jons popped up, fucked Seth on sidewalks and in bath tubs, married him, and then vanished without any actual real interactions with Edda... certainly none that continued long term.
2)
Amos is the height of masculine sexiness for women. Sure, there's a lot of weirdly lumpy hunks the women go apeshit over, but Amos is like... the ideal. The two other male musicians we see, his peers, are fairly repulsive to most people. Violist Burkhardt Kriegl is a weird womanizing piece of crap who emotionally manipulates women and has no friends other than his lover (?) the pianist Isabel Florin. Pianist Hugh Portwhistle Godalming is completely lacking in social graces and utterly oblivious to the contempt his peers hold him in. Edda and Amos like him or at least put up with him because they're friends with his wife Xiulan. Isabel and Xiulan are two of the women who were constantly throwing themselves at Amos with absolutely no encouragement on his part.
These past two strips both have a "punchline" of Edda triumphing over Mary where Amos is concerned. But it's coming completely out of left field. There's been no discussion of Mary, no discussion WITH Mary. Nobody's been reminiscing about The Good Old Days when Amos stalked Mary. I mean... McEldowney has dragged us down an interminable amount of flashbacks regarding Edda and Amos discussing fucking as small children but Mary hasn't featured in any of them. There's been absolutely no reason at all for Edda to have even the slightest bit of concern over Amos' fidelity; no risk whatsoever to their marriage; no threat to her perched atop the ivory throne on which he's stationed her.
In January we jumped from that uncomfortable "we're going to conceive ALL the babies/the hokey pokey is our fuck song" flash back to a story line about Edda and Amos fucking while playing music to two comics about Amos' underpants and then a scraggly handful of things where they kind of sort of interacted with their kids to... this. Mary as a defeated rival just out of nowhere. It doesn't make narrative sense.
And artistically can we discuss what's happening? It's three panels of talking heads and one panel of talking legs. They might as well be sitting on a couch in front of a tv while playing video games, a sentient air fryer lurking in the background waiting to spout a "yo mama" joke or say something about boobs. These two could be doing ANYTHING. They could be ANYWHERE. They could have run into each other at a bus stop, people and buses coming and going around them as they take a moment to catch up. They could be at a diner, fiddling with food/drinks to indicate their emotional state. They could be at a gym where Edda dances/leads a class and Mary does yoga and they each didn't realize how geographically close they were to each other. They could be sitting in a doctor's waiting room where Edda is waiting to confirm/deny/check on her potential pregnancy which was brought up months ago, while Mary is also waiting for same or to start/continue infertility treatments. They could have run into each other at the park, Edda with her kids and Mary with a dog. They could have run into each other at a park, Edda in a damp sweat suit as she jogs to stay in shape/because she likes moving and Mary in a business suit as she eats lunch out in nature between clients because she's a hard working attorney with almost no time to herself.
Instead they're strolling around some indistinct void dressed like they share a closet infodumping about themselves to the other.
Personally? I'd set this in a diner. Not the one Edda et al go to fuck in.
P1: They're sitting down. Edda asks how Mary's been. Married twice, divorced twice.
P2: They're facing each other. Mary states that her husband had two affairs in her first marriage.
P3: Instead of legs the camera focuses on the table, their hands. Or at least on Mary's hands. She's fidgeting with something, uncomfortable. She's the one who had the affair in the second marriage.
P4: Back to faces. "How's Amos?" "Affair-proof" as an answer I guess. It's a bad answer. It really is. It's a bad response. "Try not to look disappointed" is worse.
Ending it with just "How's Amos" is strong, though. It's a question that can go manyways: is she asking because she's interested in an affair with him and is foolish enough to display her hand to his wife? Is she asking because she's worried that he's having an affair because that's how men are? Is she asking because she's pretty sure Amos is faithful and she's a little wistful about the solid marriage that Edda and Amos have? Is she asking as a way of changing the subject? Is she asking because that's a normal thing to ask someone?
McEldowney treats Mary as a slut, though. She's a gross icky sex-haver who wants to have sex with Amos and is an adulterer and wants to adulterize with Amos. It's so blatant and so judgemental and he brought her back specifically for this I guess. Edda and Mary could be having a lovely get together where they catch up and we see character growth for both of them. It could even be unlovely in that they disagree about things or get into a fight, but still stem from and further develop their characters.Instead we just get "here's Mary. Remember her? She's a ho."
It's so lazy.
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brigid
