Prom Committee 2003
Chapter One: In Which A Horse's Rear Attends a Meeting and Proposes an Idea
From the onset, one of our shared missions for Buddy and Romeo’s comic strip, Mates and Dates, was no storylines. All strips must standalone. This was in large part my response to coming out of another series, My Guardian Grandpa, which routinely had episodic storylines that spanned four to six weeks. One story (the final one) even lasted an entire year (the final one). So I was exhausted.
The “no stories” rule was abided for most of Mates and Dates but in the last two years, there were three storylines. Maybe four or five. I forget. Two or three of them were week-long stories and one ran for two weeks. Or was it two? “Romeo’s Trial” was definitely two weeks but I forget if “The Ugly Contest” was one week or two. Anyhow, I wasn’t going to post any of the stories in the first year of this Substack but one of the storylines just happens to be “Prom Committee 2003.” Since Prom 2003 was 20 years ago this month (This weekend? Last weekend? Who could say?), this story has to be posted now.
I don’t remember much of the 2003 prom committee meetings except that I adamantly opposed using Kelly Clarkson’s “A Moment Like This” as the theme and prom song. I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard — both the song and the notion of theming a senior prom around it. At the time, I argued the song was about winning a singing competition and pretending to be about falling in love (I was right). All I remember is the heated argument and that no one agreed with me. I’m pretty sure it ended being the prom theme and the king and queen’s song. Who remembers and who cares?
Being on the prom committee in 2003 was apparently so much fun, I decided to sit on the committee again in 2011, 2012, and 2018 (glutton for punishment). In 2018, I took up the majority of our first meeting pitching a “Knight Mare” theme. It was, I thought, obviously a hilarious comedy bit but only one person found it as funny as I did and the rest of the committee was deeply concerned that I was going to force them to make the prom horse themed.
I should have.
Aside from this week’s strips being a storyline, it’s also going to be different because most of the strips are going to be behind the paywall. I realize this is probably annoying but, again, I wasn’t planning on releasing any of the storylines until a year or two down the road but the 20th anniversary must be marked. Plus, there has to be some reward for our paid subscribers (thank you thank you thank you)!
So for your enjoyment, here are the first two of six installments of Prom Committee 2003, free of charge!
Now you get to play the part of committee. If you’ve had enough of this horse’s rear for this week, come back next week when Buddy and Romeo will humiliate themselves and fail miserably on the dating scene. And if you’re enjoying yourself at Buddy and Romeo’s expense so far, please subscribe and share this Substack with your friends. As always, thanks for reading!
If you’d like to read more of Romeo’s fool plan to turn the prom into a living Knight Mare, please join us with a paid subscription. Not only will you get the remaining four strips in this story, you’ll get weekly access to additional comics, commentary, art, works-in-progress, and access to the complete aforementioned storylines. Thanks in advance!