SFP

sfp 6 77 for web

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  • Nik Gervae

    It’s about time she noticed what a swell guy he is. He’s even got a rainbow on his guitar!

  • SweetPea

    This panel is so cute! It made my day!

  • 3-I

    I feel like I don’t know enough about the cheerful hijabi drummer in the background. I totally want to. She looks awesome.

    • Balthazar

      I’m more interested in the androgynous banjo player, always wanted to learn the banjo.

      • 3-I

        I cut my finger on a banjo once.

        • Balthazar

          Ouch. Well, I guess it’s a risky but rewarding instrument to play.

    • Izo

      The drummer seems like the only one that looks in place in a rock band. Me.. I’m having trouble getting past the banjo player in the band. 🙂

  • Stephanie Gertsch

    This is a very pink page. I wonder what pink dress and white shirt are talking about in panel one. Also, for some reason it’s funny to me that the one guy has bubble tea.

    • Weatherheight

      Lovin’ all that and the drummer in the headscarf, as well.
      And didja notice?
      Allison has a pretty big sandwich!

      • Lysiuj

        Everyone’s noticing adorable minor details on this page and I love it.
        So here’s mine – pink-shirt-lady has grey/silver hair, which is always awesome!

  • ClockworkDawn

    He’s amazing and I want one.

    • Balthazar

      The him, the sunglasses or both.

      Me? I’d take the sunglasses. And anyone who has a rainbow sticker on his guitar is THE REAL DEAL kinda guy.

  • Arkone Axon

    Perhaps I’m being silly, but… I kinda hope that Alison does NOT get romantically involved with him. For several reasons. First of all, she had her chance, she rejected him, and there are clearly a bunch of other very lovely ladies here who admire and likely desire him.

    Second, the whole “spend some time being attracted to a love interest who is sexy but wicked, then go back to the sweet wholesome partner after sowing your wild oats” is just too… too cliched. Far too cliched for a masterful story like this. That sort of thing is insulting to all the characters involved.

    Third, Alison has already been shown to have a type. Which is not a problem at all – there’s nothing wrong with having a preference. Some people like chocolate and some like vanilla and some like cookie dough. And her apparent type is “men who make her forget that she’s the most powerful person on the planet.” She doesn’t want a genderswapped damsel-in-distress; she wants a strong and masculine beau who complements her own strength and assertiveness. (Kind of like how Lois Lane, especially in her best depictions – as with Terri Hatcher in “Lois and Clark,” not only had Superman treating her as an equal, but could put him in his place AND leave him bubbling like a teapot about to boil)

    Please… don’t let Cliven end up being the guy she “settles for.” He’s clearly too awesome for Alison or anyone else to “settle for” after snubbing him to date a sexy bad boy. He deserves someone who recognizes his worth and likes what they see from the very start. 🙂

    • screechfox

      Agreed. I hope they become good friends, but I think romance would be an odd choice.

    • Scott

      I have to agree. I felt like the whole turn around with Max being a total asshole was forced and not set up very well. Now the “Clevin is actually awesome” twist feels more like the plot of a terrible romcom that I would not have expected to see in this story. Not when it has previously done such an amazing job of challenging tropes and expectations with much more realistic human emotions.

    • Shjade

      While I agree with the sentiment, particularly with regard to how often this kind of dynamic shows up to the point of cliche, what we (and she) saw of Clevin from the very start wasn’t really a great first impression. That’s not her fault, and isn’t really even Clevin’s fault – they just didn’t meet under great circumstances for positive social interaction. I don’t think finding out you were wrong about someone necessarily constitutes “settling” for them when you learn more about who they are later.

    • Insatiable Booksluts

      Her type hasn’t worked out that well for her so far, though–at least, the exaggerated form of it that she’s gone after. She’s seeing here that Clevin is assertive and a leader, just not to the point of corruption or douchedom. Max was the gender-swapped damsel-in-distress, quite literally. Clevin was actually pretty chill about almost dying, as those things go, heh.

      And Clevin was really pretty assertive when he asked her out the first time, but it ended up being a bad moment and Alison literally ignored him because she saw a dude being rapey. I don’t think it had much to do with Clevin himself; he had a lot of bad timing and Alison met him during a very stressful circumstance. Getting to know him now outside of those circumstances isn’t really “settling”.

    • Danygalw

      I hope they don’t get romantically involved because I’d rather she dates Lisa. 😀

    • bryan rasmussen

      I don’t think she really sowed her wild oats.

  • Jackson

    Awwwwwwwwwwwww

  • David

    If this was Max, people here would be complaining about the cursing…but, because it’s Clevin “it’s awesome!”.

    • Balthazar

      Well in all honesty Max was kind of a (insert strong word that means not very nice person) and Clevin is wearing heart shaped sunglasses….

    • 3-I

      I feel like you may have fundamentally misread our criticism of Max and what we considered contemptible behavior.

  • Weatherheight

    Seriously? O’Toole?
    How did I miss that before!
    Okay, gotta go change my pants cause I laughed a little too hard…

    Actually, one of the up sides of being a donkey. 😀

  • Lostman

    “hopefully that his behavior is not only a facade.”- Manuel Simone

    I think otherwise.

    • Manuel Simone

      You seriously want him to be a hidden jerk? Wow, there are already too many jerks, we don’t need another one, please.

  • Izo

    So… when he was just a nice guy who wanted to take her to the movies, people don’t trust him. When it’s discovered he can play a guitar, people like him? Weird. 🙂

    • Ian Osmond

      Music is a window to the soul.

  • Balthazar

    Agree to disagree.

  • Balthazar

    It’s very sensitive to high levels of awesome.

  • Izo

    He didn’t. I think this made me think he’s more lame 🙂 (but he’s better than any other guys who have been wanting to date her). Mainly because of the glasses and being a musician who ‘rocks out’ with an acoustic guitar and a banjo.

    Still, ditch the Elton-John heart-shaped glasses and we can talk. 🙂

  • I don’t know what sort of relationship they are going to have but my sneaky suspicion is that he is not going to be able to handle the fame that would come with being Alison’s other half. It’s one thing to be famous among your peers but the rough and tumble of public life is something completely different to what he’s experienced so far.

    We can’t forget that there’s an anti-super hate group. Clevin would be a target if they knew he and her were friends let alone more.

  • Tylikcat

    It’s a little unclear from how it’s drawn but it looks like one of the styles that’s secured by a straight pin, and is generally pretty solid.

  • FlashNeko

    Except that’s just the “NICE GUY rejects woman-with-a-life who only should have known what a NICE GUY the NICE GUY was all along” cliche. Which is pretty problematic in its own special way and more fitting in a bad “revenge comedy” than this story.

    Then again, this world does seem to punish Alison whenever she tries to do… really anything good or ill so who knows, maybe it will keep up the trend.

    • masterofbones

      The thing is, as long as the guy was the initiatior, any possible reaction to this situation would be a trope. Possibilities other than the one you mentioned –

      1. She goes on with her life, continuing to ignore him? Nice guy being ignored for the bad boy.

      2. She looks at him and realizes that he has been here all along? Generic nerd MC romcom

      there isn’t really any way this can avoid being tropey – it is such a common subject. The only thing to do is to write it well, and not worry about being original.

    • ∫Clémens×ds

      You don’t have it. I’m suggesting a subversion of the nice guy trope, one where Alison stills views him as that and that’s partly why she ends up rebuked. The story already considers him more than that, Alison still needs to catch up.

  • masterofbones

    If she started a relationship with Clevin, this is what i would expect to happen eventually, based on my IRL experiences/observations

  • Aroel

    If Alison had been treating Clevin like less than a human because she viewed him as ugly or “too geeky” or whatever, I would have agreed with you (though that sure would have been a cliche, fake-nice guy influenced plot point). But she hasn’t, she seemed happy to hang out with him earlier. When she met him going on a date with Max, she hadn’t meant to snub him, she just already had planned to go on a date with Max, and happened to unfortunately run into Clevin in the process. Alison had no prior commitments to Clevin, she hadn’t done anything wrong, it was just really bad timing. Could Alison have probably handled that intentional(?) burn/dominance play Max was giving Clevin better, sure. But the situation wasn’t Alison’s fault, it was a situation that she didn’t really know how to handle, and while she might have chosen to lesson the burn for Clevin out of kindness, it wasn’t her responsibility to deal with Clevin’s hurt feelings over her being with another guy. Acting like Alison has been treating Clevin like he’s somehow less than human, when all she’s done is run into him with another guy, has a lot of red flags for romantic entitlement and sexism.

  • sadder_fish

    I’m so glad that Clevin turned out to be a nice guy, rather than a Nice Guyâ„¢.

  • Scholiast

    Don’t disdain the fine art of profane embellishment — it’s a huge motherfuckin’ element in English-language literature and performing arts.

    • Philip Bourque

      I personally find American swearing to be overused. It lacks impact now. If I’m ever actually frustrated, I’ll swear in Quebec French, though; that gets attention.

  • ∫Clémens×ds

    Surprise! I’m actually the fourth secret and highly disputed member of the SFP crew. My job is laughing at Alison and suggesting art directions.

  • bryan rasmussen

    The lyrics do seem sort of modern day whimsical folk rock style.

  • bryan rasmussen

    maybe given her energy requirements she’s eating two sandwiches.

  • Giacomo Bandini

    Tu quoque, Clevin. Tu quoque.

    Sigh. I was really thinking that you were a nerdy loser, like me and well.. most persons. But no, you have to turn out being this confident rocker, generous and inclusive of sexual and ethnical minorities.
    You are a fucking winner, aren’t you? Get out of here..

  • GreatWyrmGold

    Clevin does have some pretty abominable timing. I’m surprised he hasn’t gotten himself into more trouble yet.
    “I’m sorry, Officer, I don’t know what happened here! I was just walking by!”

  • Izo

    I dunno 🙂 I just see banjos and I think ‘Deliverance’ or Country Hoe-Down.

  • Izo

    Now I know. And knowing is half the battle.

  • Weatherheight

    “You got my order wrong!”
    >>zmmmmmmm<<
    "No, I didn't."

  • Rich The Bluegeek

    Yeah, I noticed that too.

  • Lysiuj

    Yep. Or at least, I’d like him a hell of a lot more.

  • SuddenFan

    These lyrics are great!

  • Lexkat13

    It’s likely Clevin, he just doesn’t know it, or tries to hide his “super-power”.

  • Philip Bourque

    You can tell a lot about a society by what it swears with. In Quebec, the French use Catholic terms as our swear words.