Esther has, many months after Ed Gemmell's drunken confession of his feelings (of which she was already aware), concluded she likes him, too. All that remains is, as Esther puts it, to use the month of December to get him under the mistletoe. Her boss at the comic shop has over 20 years of accumulated fad nerd shit piled up, and Esther finds a bunch of Advent calendars. Including one for Babylon 5! Gemmell's heart is sure to be hers!
Personally, I think she should have quoted the dialogue from Batman Returns about the relative lethality of mistletoe versus a kiss. Ed would probably have spontaneously combusted with attraction.
Susan thinks, predictably, this is a terrible idea, but hasn't got time to try harder to talk Esther out of it. McGraw has gotten roped into regularly helping some older gentleman named Cliff with various. . .activities. These are carried on at all hours of the day and night, and seem to be sucking away McGraw's life. He can barely enjoy the lasagna he made!
With that to contend with, the best Susan can manage is warning that Ed's been hanging out with Nina, a large Australian girl who is also in physiotherapy due to drunken decision-making. Esther's response is, when approached by arch-nemesis and housemate Dean Thompson about whether Ed and Nina are dating, to tell him the field is open and go for it.
Yeah, that intel was out of date, as pretty much the first thing Nina does after she and Ed ditch the crutches, is invite him home for dinner that quickly turns to sex. I would say it's fortunate they went to her room for the latter, but knowing the conditions of kitchens occupied by college kids, sex would hardly impact the cleanliness.
Nina is so smitten with Ed, she asks if he'll come visit her in Australia after Christmas. They don't waste time in the land down under (as highlighted in the Giant Days one-shot, "Where Women Roam and Men Thunder"). Ed demurs, not sure if he can afford the plane ticket. He's also worried, as he explains to a rapidly disintegrating Esther, that he'll develop serious feelings for Nina, then she'll return to Australia after college and that'll be it. He asks Esther to tell him what to do.
Esther says go for it, an act of remarkable maturity. Which she follows by retreating upstairs for Advent-calendar-chocolate therapy while Ed ponders how to wrangle money for a plane ticket. Fortunate that Daisy has gotten hired on with a Christmas village, run by someone McGraw would be all too familiar with.
[4th longbox, 180th comic. Giant Days #42, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Whitney Cogar (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer)]
2 comments:
I'm trying to work out that reference to the moon pirate, sentient hairdryer, and bank manager. If it's a reference to Babylon 5 I can't work out who's who (Kosh is the hairdryer maybe?) and if it's a reference to another 90s show I can't place it.
They show us the Babylon 5 calendar at one point. There's a robot thing I guess could be said to look like one of those industrial hairdryers you see in the beauty salons. The big cone-shaped ones that sit over the person's entire scalp? I assume that's who Susan means, but I never watched the show, so it's all Greek to me.
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