TOW #25 - OMG Check Please! by Ngozi Ukazu

On the surface, the web-comic OMG Check Please! Appears to be about a young, southern, gay, baker, hockey player, who video blogs about his life at college. However, once someone begins to look deeper the story becomes about the struggle of not knowing what to do for the rest of your life, what it’s like to fall in love, homophobia in the NHL, and even a couple baking recipes. Ngozi Ukazu started the web-comic in August of 2013 while earning her sequential art degree at Yale. She has never played hockey, has never baked a pie, and has never fallen in love.

                As a comic book artist, Ngozi’s primary purpose is always to entertain and make money off of her work. And she is very successful with this, typically when Ngozi restocks her online store that sells physical copies of the comic, pins, shirts, and prints everything pretty much sells out within a few hours. However, the reason her comic is so poplar is because she very successfully achieves her secondary purpose which is to create a comic that people can relate to. She does this in many different ways but the most prevalent on is by writing characters that are very diverse and three dimensional. Every one of Ngozi’s characters has at least one aspect someone can relate to. The main character is a closeted gay man, this helps Ngozi appeal to the queer community because almost every queer person, even if they don’t identify as gay, has experience being in the closet. Then the comic largely revolves around hockey which opens her up to the sports community. There are many more characters I could go through but that would just become redundant.

Ngozi’s achieves both of her purposes very well. She gets to make money by selling her work while also creating a lovely store about the struggles of a college student. Even though I’m not a college student I still feel very much represented in a lot of her characters throughout the comic, especially because in the newest update the hockey team hired a new manager who is also the stage manager in the drama department.