Sheep, and the Counting Thereof

It's no secret that we, here at Dim Bulb Comics, are fans of Count Your Sheep. Cricket's sent in a fan strip and I've had Travis wearing a CYS sweatshirt on a couple occassions. It's a well-written, slick looking strip that taps into that same part of the heart that Calvin & Hobbes did (Adis is probably tired of being compared to Calvin & Hobbes, but that sense of what its like to be a kid is present in both). All in all, I'm glad Ping Teo turned us on to it.

However (why does that word always seem to imply gloom and doom?), Adis is flirting with something I'm not sure the strip can thematically handle. Let me give you the rundown. Things we know for sure are:

1. Ship, the sheep, is Katie's imaginary friend/counting sheep
2. Ship was originally Laurie's imaginary friend/counting sheep (Laurie is Katie's mother)
3. Laurie is a single mother, 27 years old, and Katie's father, Marty, is no longer alive
4. The strip's pallette is in shades of blue or purple depending on whether it takes place in Katie's or Laurie's childhood, respectively
5. Though a number of the strips are bittersweet, the emphasis is more often than not on the sweet.

The problem is that Adis is eventually going to tell the story of how Marty died. It's almost inevitable at this point. He's dropped too many hints and even said he was going to in the accompanying commentary a number of times. He hasn't yet, though, and that's a good thing. You see, from one point, I can see why he would want to tell the story. It seems like a necessary thing, you know, to fill in the blanks between the purple and the blue strips. Unfortunately, since the story essentially focuses on childhood moments with a comical bent, the death of a parent, even if it is one we've never met (at least in memory I don't think Marty's ever been shown, I could be wrong). Eric Burns might call the move "Cerebrus Syndrome", though it seems that Adis has been aiming towards this for a while, so it's hard to say that he'd be changing directions (from funny and light to more serious with more "character development") because he was bored, as in true Cerebrus Syndrome. Still, a shift like this could seriously injure the strip because of the thematic incongruity.

Or it could be a thing of beauty. I'm not saying the strip can't grow. I'm just afraid that the gentle nature of the strip could overshadowed by the heavy material. Either way...I REALLY like CYS (and all the Beatles references lately!), so I'll be following this closely.