Better Days
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Better Days is a comedy/drama comic written by Jay Naylor. The strip began on April 18, 2003 and the last strip was released on May 29, 2009. It is now considered a completed work, and Naylor has begun a "sequel" comic titled Original Life.
Better Days is about Fisk and Lucy Black, two fraternal twin siblings growing up in the U.S. state of Georgia, and their mother, Sheila. All of the Blacks are cats. There is profanity and some violence, but although the comic is highly suggestive, it is not sexually (visually) explicit, like much of Naylor's art. The comic is divided up into "chapters" (story arcs) of varying length, each one portraying a significant and sometimes difficult episode in the life of the Blacks. Fisk and Lucy are also seen in Badly Drawn Kitties by Mat Sherer.
Contents |
[edit] Chapter Summaries
- Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
- Chapter 1: "Honest Girls" - Fisk has his sister Lucy deliver a love note to a popular girl, who turns him down after another girl reads it aloud to other girls in a locker room.
- Chapter 2: "How to Impress" - While Fisk attempts to impress Jenny's parents, Lucy refers him to a Bible verse where David presented foreskins to King Saul in order to marry his daughter.
- Chapter 3: "My Sister's Keeper" - While taking care of his sick sister, Fisk accidentally gives Lucy the wrong medicine, resulting in a family emergency with Lucy's life in the balance and Fisk's guilt issues overwhelming him.
- Chapter 4: "The Bedbutter Chronicles" - An example of one of Naylor's more political arcs, Fisk's mouth gets him in trouble with his Democratic teacher. When Sheila comes in for a parent-teacher conference, she and Mrs. Bedbutter get into a heated argument dealing with feminist issues.
- Chapter 5: "Predators" - Sheila goes on a date with Principal Longfellow, whom she met in the last chapter. He lies about having known Sheila's deceased husband during the war, and when she confronts him about it, he rapes her. Fisk catches him, and knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat. Longfellow dies under suspicious circumstances while undergoing reconstructive surgery (it is hinted that Sheila's dead husband's CO, the friend that alerted her to the lie, is involved in Longfellow's death).
- Chapter 6: "Tough Love" - An 11-year-old female hyena named Nikki shows her interest in 10-year-old Fisk; the two end up having sex. The FBI discovers that the hyena's father is wanted for murder and rape, and it's implied that he sexually abuses his children, a reason why the girl insisted on sex with Fisk.
- Chapter 7: "Of Mice and Idiots" - A new year at school, and most of the girls have hit puberty - except for Elizabeth, whom Fisk asks out after Lucy blackmails him.
- Chapter 8: "Chess" - Fisk has a discussion about war and human nature over a game of chess with a family friend.
- Chapter 9: "Lucy's Mom" - Ted, a football player at school, asks Lucy out in order to get closer to her mom.
- Chapter 10: "Brother's Arms" - When Lucy finds out the truth behind Ted dating her, she's an emotional wreck. When Fisk comforts her, things take a turn for the intimate. This marks the beginning of Lucy and Fisk's incestuous relationship; it is implied that this the relationship continues on and off until Lucy leaves for college and Fisk leaves for the Army.
- Chapter 11: "Armed and Amorous" - Ready to date again but concerned about safety after the Longfellow incident, Sheila seeks self-defense training from Sam Tobs, a next-door neighbor in a cold marriage. They end up becoming intimate, only giving fodder to the private investigator Tobs' jealous wife hired.
- Chapter 12: "Exemplary Girls" - It's time for the Halloween Dance, and Fisk is hooked up with a cheerleader's sister who turns out to be the polar opposite of her sibling - a Wiccan lesbian. Womanizer Randy asks Lucy to the dance, which turns into nothing short of a drama fest. Lucy also becomes worried she may have caught something when she discovers Randy didn't use a condom while having sex with her after the dance.
- Chapter 13: "Thicker Than Water" - The Black family visits relatives when they hear their grandfather is dying. Fisk decides to join the army.
- Chapter 14: "All the Wrong Places" - Lucy seeks out relationship advice from her roommates while getting used to life at the University of Georgia. She ends up fooling around with Tommy, the boyfriend of one of her roommates, Rachel, who has been unsuspectingly cheated on for years. Fisk visits Lucy after finishing basic training at Fort Benning.
- Chapter 15: "Reconciliation" - While in training, Fisk injures himself, and his nurse turns out to be Nikki, the same hyena from his childhood.
- Chapter 16: "Lucy Black" - Lucy has to deal with office politics during her internship at CNN. Tommy has to deal with his Catholic parents in the aftermath of his breakup with Rachel and his new relationship with Lucy.
- Chapter 17: "Trial By Fire" - When Fisk's about to finish his service in the army, The Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) begins, and he's dragged into the fight.
- Chapter 18: "Reacquainted" - The Gulf War is winding down. Fisk talks to friends about what they'll do when their service terms are over.
- Chapter 19: "Party Girls" - Robert proposes to Jessica, and the Bachelor/Bachelorette parties are planned. However, this leads to trouble over strippers being booked for both.
- Chapter 20: "The Art of Living" - Fisk's lover, Beth, goes to New York to display her artwork at a gallery, and starts to believe Fisk may be the one for her.
- Chapter 21: "Father's Footsteps" - Fisk learns that his late father had an undercover CIA job, and that when his father died, the agency went rogue[1]. He agrees to join what now amounts to an illegal terrorist organization. It is subsequently shown that they endorse bombs, murder, obstruction of US justice, and compromise of US government intelligence assets. The group bears some similarities to "The Campus" from Tom Clancy's Teeth of the Tiger. In both cases, the organizations operate without government oversight or authorization, and fronts as financial trading firms [2].
- Chapter 22: "Roll Play" - Lucy gets talked into joining a Zombie Campaign in a D&D style RPG-game by Tommy along with three of his friends.
- Chapter 23: "Persia" - Fisk tracks down his cousin Persia when she goes missing.
- Chapter 24: "Men And Women" - Lucy stumbles across Aron and Beth having sex and finds herself being attracted to Aron, while Elizabeth catches her husband David cheating on her and starts her own affair with Fisk.
- Chapter 25: "Better Days" - the conclusion of Better days: Beth and Aron begin their new lives in Florida, Persia and her boyfriend Flounce receive sympathy back pay and severance from Persia's old porn director, and newly-married Fisk and Elizabeth decide to have children.
[edit] Conservative Politics
The comic is known for its conservative outlook, as well as for featuring controversial and sensitive issues such as incest, the Vietnam war, racial issues (Naylor loosely equates species with races in a manner similar to Art Spiegelman's - European whites are felines and canines, Semitic people are represented as mice, African-Americans as hyenas, etc.), masculism, rape, and sexual abuse. Anti-feminist viewpoints are often expressed by Sheila, mainly in regards to Fisk's liberal-minded teacher, Mrs. Bedbutter, who plays a type of villain in the chapter entitled "The Bedbutter Chronicles." In the chapter, Fisk had been receiving poor grades on liberal-minded essays in Mrs. Bedbutter's class regarding issues as environmental protection, poor treatment of Native Americans, slavery, and President Jimmy Carter, whom Bedbutter is a major supporter of, presumably as a result of his expression of conservative viewpoints. Sheila describes the liberal teachings of Bedbutter as "sick political indoctrination" and becomes enraged at Bedbutter's indignation regarding her scant clothing.
Also, from time to time, anti-abortion sentiments are expressed in the comic, as demonstrated by Sheila's statement to Lucy regarding their trip to the doctor's office to get a prescription for birth control pills, "We're not killing unborn kittens in this family..."
The strip is also known for its fierce anti-communist sentiments, mainly conveyed during an entire chapter devoted to the subject, entitled "Chess," in which Fisk and his father's former CO Robert Kelso discuss the Vietnam War over a late-night game of chess. Kelso defends the rationale for the War in Vietnam, describing it as necessary to rid the world of "communist hegemony." Kelso also expresses the basic tenets of neoconservatism during the conversation with Fisk by expressing the need to "extend our [the US's] protection" to other nations.
Racial stereotypes are often perpetuated by the characters in the strip. Hyenas, the strip's equivalent of African-Americans, almost always speak in racially-identifiable jargon, and Fisk's young childhood lover, Shanikwa, is portrayed as a sexually motivated 11-year old with a sexually abusive father, presumably a member of the Nation of Islam, who has been on the FBI's Most Wanted List for 13 years.
[edit] Timeline/Trivia
The following is not to be considered serious or at all accurate. What follows is a collection of visual clues seen in the comic throughout its run so far and was assembled into a rough timeline.
- The main characters are first seen as nine year old kittens at the start of the comic. At the same time, the political button on Miss Bedbutter's shirt has the number 80 on it, further solidifying the time period of the arc being in 1980.
- The song "Into the Groove" is used in Chapter 9 and that same song was released in 1985 as the B-Side of the single "Angel" and was featured in the movie "Desperately Seeking Susan" that same year. Both Fisk and Lucy are 14 in that arc and starting high school as freshmen at that time.
- "The Wall" is visibly seen and they have or are very close to graduating high school which places the two main characters at about 17 or 18 years old.
When taken into consideration, the following trivia can be assumed:
- Fisk and Lucy were born in 1971.
- The comic starts in 1980.
- They enter high school in 1985.
- They graduate from high school in 1989 (somewhere between chapters 13 and 14). Operation Desert Storm will begin two years from their graduation.
- Actual concrete evidence of the current date is seen in the last strip of Chapter 21. In it, Fisk receives plane tickets for a flight that arrives at it's destination on May 11th, 1993.
With research done, this could be the most accurate timeline (year, age of the Black twins):
- Chapter 1: Honest Girls - 1980, 9
- Chapter 2: How To Impress - 1980, 9
- Chapter 3: My Sister's Keeper - 1980, 9
- Chapter 4: The Bedbutter Chronicles - 1980, 9
- Chapter 5: Predator - 1980, 9
- Chapter 6: Tough Love - 1981, 10
- Chapter 7: Of Mice And Idiots - 1983, 12
- Chapter 8: Chess - 1984, 13
- Chapter 9: Lucy's Mother - 1985, 14
- Chapter 10: Brother's Arms - 1985, 14
- Chapter 11: Armed And Amorous - 1985-1986, 14-15
- Chapter 12: Exemplary Girls - 1987, 16
- Chapter 13: Thicker Than Water - 1988, 17
- Chapter 14: All The Wrong Places - 1989, 18
- Chapter 15: Reconciliation - 1989, 18
- Chapter 16: Lucy Black - 1990, 19
- Chapter 17: Trial By Fire - 1990-1991, 19-20
- Chapter 18: Reacquainted - 1991, 20
- Chapter 19: Party Girls - 1992, 21
- Chapter 20: The Art Of Living - 1992, 21
- Chapter 21: Father's Footsteps - 1993, 22
- Chapter 22: Roll Play - 1993, 22
- Chapter 23: Persia - 1994, 23
- Chapter 24: Men And Women - 1996, 25
- Chapter 25: Better Days - 1997, 26
- Birth of Lucy and Tommy's son Leo- 1997-1998
- Birth of Fisk and Elizabeth's daughter Janie- 1998-1999
- Birth of Fisk and Elizabeth's son Thomas- 2000-2001
- Birth of Fisk and Elizabeth's daughter Abigail- 2002-2003
- Birth of Aron and Beth's daughter Lillith- 2004-2005
[edit] Outside story arcs
Jay Naylor sells many of his erotic comics online on his website. Several of them are based on the Better Days storyline. [1]
Some of these titles include, but are not limited to: (in no appearent order)
- Wicked Affairs - Set approximately in the present day. Elizabeth, having indeed married within her race as it was suggested she would have had to do in Chapter 7. In Part 1, she caught her husband cheating on her, and Lucy told her she should talk to Fisk about it. In Part 2, Elizabeth and Fisk do meet up, and Elizabeth reveals a desire to end her marriage and be with him instead. Jay Naylor has revealed that there will be at least one more part to the story in the future. (it spelled "to be countinued" in the end of part 2) Part of this story has been written into Chapter 24 "Men and Women".
- Beth's Night In - Beth, one of Lucy's roommates, deals with her sexual needs since she has no desire to enter another relationship (see Chapter 14 of Better Days to find out why).
- Rachel's Confessions - Rachel visits a church confessional booth to confess her lustful cheating ways.
- The Best Friend's Brother - Set during Chapter 14 of Better Days. Shows a connection being formed between Fisk and Beth.
- On The Rebound - Set during Chapter 14 of Better Days. Lucy teaches Tommy about sex after Tommy dumps Rachel.
- Amys Little Lamb Summer Camp Adventure - Lucy's college roommate Amy returns to her childhood summer camp and runs into an old friend. It is here that young love gives in to temptation.
- No Remorse - Set some time after her college days, Rachel is featured in an introspective look at the abusive degradation she inflicts on herself and her boyfriend (eventual husband), Alex.
- Puss 'n Boots - After her first fling with Fisk, Beth decides to start dating again. Her sister gives her a special gift which is sure to help.
- Breeding Bobbie - Set in the past, Sheila's sister Bobbie goes to adulterous lengths in order to become pregnant with Persia.
- Puppy Love - A story done in a poetic style showing how Robert and Jessica first met.
In addition to another section of Wicked Affairs, there will be more Better Days-based erotic comics put on sale in the future. Comics involving Lucy's other roommates, Amy and Jessica, have been suggested.
Lucy and her roommates can also be seen in Jay Naylor's "Undies!" portfolio.
[edit] See Also
[edit] References
- ↑ http://www.jaynaylor.com/betterdays/archives/2008/04/chapter-21-fath-6.html
- ↑ 1. Clancy, Tom (2003). Teeth of the Tiger, The. G.P. Putnam & Son. ISBN 0-3991-5079-X.
[edit] External links
- Better Days home page
- Better Days article at Comixpedia
