Match to Flame 224

My Holy Grail search continued to run around, through, and under the other stories you’ll find in this volume. Post–Lisa’s story, however, the work had changed. First, Lisa had raised the bar quite a bit, and there was now a lot more thumping of stories to make sure they weren’t hollow. This would lead to stories such as the arc about gay students attending the prom and Fred Fairgood’s stroke. Also, Darin’s birth father, Frank, returns (if the strip has an arch villain, this character is it) in a tale where young Lisa’s comment about “not being in love or anything but the back of Frankie’s van” is deepened by the revelation of her date rape. That story contains an interesting fix of a small lapse on my part. Without planning to, I had given the same surname to two different characters. In my John Darling strip, I had a character named Jan Murdoch who later married John Darling. Jan and John Darling had a daughter named Jessica. In Crankshaft, I gave the same surname to his son-in-law Jeff Murdoch (in each case I was probably thinking of Daredevil’s alter ego Matt Murdoch. And as we’ve already established, I’m a geek). However, these are the kind of writing problems that I enjoy. Much like when Stan Lee called the Hulk’s alter ego Bruce Banner, then later Bob Banner, and then finally decreeing that his name was Robert Bruce Banner, I decided to engage in some retroactive continuity repair and make Jan and Jeff brother and sister, which would make Jeff Jessica’s uncle. Jessica would then carry that lineage into Funky Winkerbean when she married Darin Fairgood, the son that Lisa gave up for adoption. Are you with me so far? So in the backstory of Lisa and Frankie, I inserted a young Jeff Murdoch who then also plays a part in the present-day story. I thought that was kind of an elegant solution, so, to double down, I wrote a corresponding week in Crankshaft to help make the relationships perfectly clear. Since it amounts to something of a crossover, as is our practice, I’ve included the Crankshaft week in this volume as well.