Check, Please! (webcomic)

Check, Please! is a 2013 webcomic written and illustrated by Ngozi Ukazu. The webcomic follows vlogger and figure-turned-ice hockey skater Eric "Bitty" Bittle as he deals with hockey culture in college, as well as his identity as a gay man. Ukazu provides fans of Check, Please! a variety of extra content through her Tumblr and a dedicated Twitter account; establishing a piece of transmedia storytelling to expand on worldbuilding. A large fan base has accumulated around Check, Please!, and when Ukazu set up a Kickstarter campaign to fund the physical release of a first volume of the webcomic, she reached her goal with ease. In November 2019, Ukazu started up a Kickstarter to fund a Check Please! "chirpbook" containing Bitty's best tweets. The Kickstarter surpassed her goal within a single day.

Check, Please!
Banner for Check, Please! Year One, featuring protagonist "Bitty"
Author(s)Ngozi Ukazu
Websitehttp://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/
http://checkpleasecomic.com/
Current status/scheduleCompleted
Launch date8 August 2013
Genre(s)Sports, LGBT

In May 2017, Ukazu created an official website for Check, Please. On April 7, 2020, book two of Check Please! came out in bookstores, containing the comic's ending before it was posted on the website. Ukazu then started posting the remaining comics one a day onto the website ending on April 11 with the final comic which was itself entitled Check Please!.

Content

The plot of Check, Please! follows Eric "Bitty" Bittle, vlogger and (initially) freshman student at the fictional Samwell University, a Massachusetts private university. Formerly a figure skating champion, Eric landed a scholarship through a co-ed ice hockey game after sending in film of his skating skills. The character joins the school's hockey team, and is an instant hit with his teammates due to his cheery personality, culinary skills, and kind nature. Check, Please! details his interactions with the hockey team as Bittle interacts with four players and the female team manager: a cocky man named Shitty, the inseparable friends Ransom and Holster, stern and skilled team captain Jack, and sarcastic team manager Lardo.[1] Meanwhile, Eric has to navigate his own sexuality due to his budding crush on Jack and eventual relationship with him. The webcomic follows the four years Eric spends at Samwell University in "real-time", and the plot focuses on events such as coming out, school stress, collegiate and professional athletics, and graduation.[2]

The story of Check, Please! is told through Eric's narration, though the webcomic features short intermissions titled "Hockey Shit with Ransom and Holster", in which characters explain the rules and terminology of hockey in a humorous manner. Each page of Check, Please! may be in a different art style, depending on what Ukazu sees fit. Ukazu provides a variety of extra content through her Tumblr, answering readers' questions to the characters of the webcomic through short response comics.[1] Check, Please! pages are aligned horizontally, as to imitate the look of online videos appropriate for Eric's vlogs.[3]

Ukazu makes use of transmedia storytelling by creating a Twitter account for her character Eric. Between updates, "Eric" writes tweets to fans of his vlog, an element Ukazu uses to interact with her readers and expand the narrative of the webcomic.[3]

Plot

In Year One, former figure skater Eric "Bitty" Bittle, joins the Samwell Men's Hockey Team where his cheerful personality and baking quickly wins over fellow teammates "Shitty" Knight, Adam "Holster" Birkholtz, Justin "Ransom" Oluransi and team manager Larissa "Lardo" Duan. However, Bitty displays a fear of checking, often curling up into a ball on the ice when someone tries, earning him the ire of team captain Jack Zimmermann, the son of hockey legend Bad Bob Zimmermann and who hopes to revive his own failed professional career following a public overdose that forced Jack to drop out of the NHL draft. Nevertheless, Jack helps Bitty through his fear with early morning checking practices while Bitty finds the courage to come out as homosexual. Jack and Bitty maintain a fraught relationship, complicated when Bitty scores in front of Bad Bob and is later put on Jack's line. During the playoffs, Bitty agrees to a risky play that leaves him with a mild concussion. Despite the team winning the game, they ultimately lose the playoffs. Bitty is given the room of graduating team goalie Johnson in the hockey team's frat house - the Haus - and reconciles with Jack, who is voted team captain again, before they part ways for the summer.

In Year Two, Bitty's fear of checking returns worse than ever due to his concussion and he faces potentially being cut from the team. However, Jack helps Bitty through his phobia once more and he retains his spot on the team. Joining the team in Bitty's sophomore year are goalie Christopher "Chowder" Chow and defensemen William "Dex" Poindexter and Derek "Nursey" Nurse. Bitty often finds himself mediating for the latter two who are constantly at each other's throats despite being paired up on the ice due to their differing views caused by coming from two very different worlds. Now friends with Jack, who faces decisions regarding his own professional hockey future, while working together on a class project, Bitty realizes that he is falling in love with his team captain, feelings which only grow deeper as time goes on. The team makes it all the way to the NCAA Frozen Four, but ultimately loses their last game. At the end of the year, Ransom and Holster are elected co-captains while Jack, who signs with the Providence Falconers expansion team, buys a new oven to replace Bitty's old one after it breaks down for good. Jack and Shitty graduate with Shitty heading off for Harvard law school, but Bitty can't bring himself to admit his feelings to Jack. After a talk with his father, Jack rushes back to the Haus and surprises Bitty with a kiss before having to leave again.

In Year Three, Bitty and Jack have officially begun dating over the summer, but keep their relationship a complete secret to protect Jack's professional hockey career. Joining the team is excitable Tony "Tango" Tangredi, reserved Connor "Whiskey" Whisk and later new manager Denise Ford, a theater major, while Jack becomes close friends with Alexei "Tater" Mashkov, an extremely friendly and extroverted Russian player on the Falconers. Jack and Bitty struggle with the pressures of keeping their relationship a complete secret, Bitty in particular, leading to Bitty having an emotional breakdown. The two subsequently reveal their relationship to their closest friends who had already figured it out, but kept quiet out of respect. Jack and Bitty later reveal their relationship to Jack's parents and the Falconers who also prove to be supportive, Tater in particular. SMH ultimately gets knocked out of the playoffs early, but Jack's career with the Falconers soars and he is elected alternate captain partway through his rookie year while Bitty is elected captain of the Samwell team for his senior year on a rare unanimous vote. Living with Jack through the summer, Bitty struggles with telling his parents who don't even know that he's gay yet, particularly Bitty's father Richard "Coach" Bittle with whom Bitty has always had a distant and difficult relationship. The Falconers win the Stanley Cup and Bitty and Jack share a kiss on center ice, coming out to the world.

In Year Four, Jack and Bitty have to deal with the aftermath of their public coming out which also revealed their relationship and Bitty's sexuality to his parents. After Coach Bittle comes to Samwell for Family Weekend, an explosive confrontation between father and son over Coach's apparent inability to recognize Bitty's relationship leads the two to reconcile and develop a closer relationship. Jack is invited to spend Christmas in Georgia with Bitty's family where, after some initial tension, Bitty's parents prove to be accepting and supportive of their relationship. At the same time, Bitty leads the Samwell Men's Hockey Team through a stellar season, joined by freshmen Johnathan "Hops" Hopper, River "Bully" Bullard and the Swedish Lukas "Louis" Landmann. Adding to Bitty's struggles, he is the first openly gay NCAA men's hockey captain, garnering Bitty attention from the media and fans that is both good and bad which Bitty takes as a chance to become a role model to those like himself. Tension between Dex and Nursey after they forced to share a room causes Dex to move into the Haus basement while Bitty discovers Whiskey kissing a lacrosse player and is frustrated by Whiskey's constant rebuffing of his efforts to befriend him. The Samwell team makes it to the Frozen Four where Bitty skates through a massive check from a homophobic player on the other team and checks the other player so hard that they are both flung into the Samwell bench and Bitty loses a tooth; Samwell ends up winning the NCAA championship.

At the end of the comic, Bitty decides to give his room in the Haus to Whiskey, leading to the two finally talking about the kiss Bitty witnessed and Whiskey's struggles and Dex is elected the team's new captain. Bitty gives a class speech encouraging people to find a place where they can truly be themselves and accepts Jack's marriage proposal. After graduating, Bitty signs a deal to write his own cookbook and dedicates his vlog to covering his work on the cookbook with Jack as his first guest.

Characters
  • Eric "Bitty" Bittle: A figure skater turned hockey player and the comic's main protagonist. At the start of the comic, Bitty is a closeted homosexual who suffers from a phobia of checking due to bullying growing up, in particular an incident after he briefly played Peewee football. Bitty greatly enjoys baking and often provides his friends and teammates with his creations. As time goes on, Bitty starts a romantic relationship with his team captain Jack Zimmermann and leads the Samwell Men's Hockey Team to victory as a senior. Following graduation, Bitty becomes engaged to Jack and plans to write his own cookbook.
  • Jack Zimmermann: The French Canadian captain of the Samwell Men's Hockey Team who is the son of hockey legend Bad Bob Zimmermann. Years before, Jack was predicted to go first overall in the NHL draft, but suffered a public overdose that ended his prospects. Initially harsh to Bitty, the two become friends and start a romantic relationship. After graduation, Jack signs with the Providence Falconers expansion team where he becomes the Falconers' lead scorer and alternate captain as a rookie for the leadership he brings to the team. He and Bitty later get engaged after Bitty graduates.
  • Byron Sterling "Shitty" Knight: Generally known only by his hockey nickname of Shitty, he is one of Bitty and Jack's closest friends and comes from a rich family that he is not close with. After graduating from Samwell, Shitty joins Harvard law school.
  • Justin "Ransom" Oluransi: A defenseman and the best friend of Holster, the two basically adopt Bitty during his freshman year. Ransom has anxiety and sometimes curls into a ball when it gets too much for him. During Bitty's sophomore year, Ransom and Holster act as co-captains. After graduating, the two join a consulting firm after Ransom decides not to go to medical school which was his original plan. Ransom is a big fan of Jack's Falconers teammate and friend Tater to the point that he hides in the attic when Tater comes over out of nerves.
  • Adam "Holster" Birkholtz: A defenseman and the best friend of Ransom, the two basically adopt Bitty during his freshman year. During Bitty's sophomore year, Ransom and Holster act as co-captains. After graduating, the two join a consulting firm.
  • Larissa "Lardo" Duan: An art student and the hockey team's manager. Lardo has a close relationship with Shitty and the two are implied to have romantic feelings for each other though it is never shown if they enter a relationship with each other or not.
  • William "Dex" Poindexter: A defenseman from Maine who comes from a poor family. Despite being paired up with each other on the ice, he and Nursey are often at each other's throats, much to the frustration of their friends. In Bitty's senior year, Dex and Nursey move in together due to a coin flip, leading to a blowout fight and Dex moving into the basement. Dex is elected captain after Bitty graduates. Dex is shown to have good handyman skills and occasionally repairs things around the Haus for the team.
  • Derek "Nursey" Nurse: A defenseman from New York City who comes from a rich family. Despite being paired up with each other on the ice, he and Dex are often at each other's throats, much to the frustration of their friends. In Bitty's senior year, Dex and Nursey move in together due to a coin flip, leading to a blowout fight and Dex moving into the basement. That same year, Nursey breaks his arm and is out of hockey for awhile, though he returns to playing by the time that Samwell makes it to the championship.
  • Christopher "Chowder" Chow: An Asian-American goalie from California and a die hard fan of the San Jose Sharks to the point that he decorates his room in Sharks' merchandise and constantly wears a Sharks hoodie. Chowder becomes close friends with Bitty, Dex and Nursey and is often caught in the middle of the latter two's arguments. When Chowder joins the team, he is wearing braces which he finally gets off between his sophomore and junior years. Chowder also has a girlfriend named Caitlin Farmer whom he met after literally running into her as a freshman.
  • Kent Parson: The captain of the Las Vegas Aces expansion team and Jack's former best friend from when he was younger. When Jack dropped out of the NHL draft due to his overdose, Kent went first overall instead. After overhearing a fight between the two at a party his sophomore year, Bitty develops a grudge against Kent. Jack tells Bitty at one point that he and Kent owe each other a lot of apologies. After they start dating, Jack admits to Bitty that he and Kent had a romantic relationship as teenagers, but dismisses it as being more or less a fling. In Bitty's senior year, Kent visits Bitty to clear the air between them and to give Jack and Bitty his best wishes.
  • Tony "Tango" Tangredi: A hockey player who joins the Samwell team when Bitty is a junior. Somewhat excitable, Tango appears to not be very bright, asking a lot of questions, some with obvious answers, during his Samwell tour. During Kent Parson's visit in Bitty's senior year, Tango discovers that he is apparently second cousins with Kent's teammate Scraps.
  • Connor "Whiskey" Whisk: A hockey player who joins the team when Bitty is a junior alongside Tango. Whiskey is shown to be very reserved and spends more time with the hockey team's rivals, the lacrosse team, than he does his own teammates. Whiskey becomes the team's star player with stats comparable to Jack's and it's suggested that he has ambitions of playing hockey professionally. During his senior year, Bitty discovers Whiskey kissing a lacrosse player and Whiskey constantly rebuffs his attempts to talk to or befriend him, though Whiskey and Bitty are shown to make a good team on the ice. When Bitty graduates, he gives Whiskey his room in the Haus and the two reconcile. Whiskey admits to Bitty that he still has a girlfriend back home and is trying to figure out who he is.
  • Denice Ford: A theater major who is hired as team manager as a replacement for the graduating Lardo. Despite her small stature, Ford is shown to have a powerful voice that carries far and states that she is used to dealing with jocks as her brothers play football.
  • Johnathan "Hops" Hopper: An African-American hockey player who joins the team in Bitty's senior year. Hops' mother is a fan of Bitty's vlog and Hops and Bitty quickly become friends.
  • River "Bully" Bullard: A defenseman who joins the team in Bitty's senior year. Bully owns a motorcycle and was shown to be able to flawlessly perform Bitty's figure skating based hazing unlike Hops and Louis who both struggled. At one point, Bully draws the ire of Nursey who feels that Bully is trying to steal his place as the hockey team's self-proclaimed "bad boy."
  • Lukas "Louis" Landmann: A hockey player who joins the team in Bitty's senior year. Louis is originally from Sweden and likes music, though his "lover's playlist" was so intense that it sent Chowder running for the bathroom at one point. Louis is shown to be quite friendly, though he seems to be more intimidated by Bitty than the other freshmen, barely able to form a coherent response when Bitty catches Louis, Hops and Bully at a party against his explicit instructions and privately complaining that the drinking age in Sweden is eighteen.
  • Suzanne Bittle: Bitty's mother with whom he is very close, although she is initially unaware of her son's sexuality. Suzanne, who enjoys baking like her son, is in a long-standing feud with her sister Judy over a jam recipe. After Jack joins the Providence Falconers, she becomes a major fan of his and Bitty struggles with revealing their romantic relationship to her. After learning of it, Suzanne and Bitty's relationship becomes somewhat awkward, but over Christmas she makes it clear that she supports her son no matter what, though she is enraged to learn that Bitty uses Judy's jam recipe instead of hers.
  • Richard "Coach" Bittle: Bitty's mostly-unseen football coach father who is mainly referred to by his title of Coach, even by his son. Bitty and his father are shown to have a distant relationship with Bitty being concerned about his father's reaction in particular to his sexuality. During Bitty's senior year, Coach visits Samwell over Family Weekend, leading to a blowout fight over his apparent inability to accept Bitty and Jack's relationship. The two subsequently reconcile and become closer with Bitty often dropping his use of his father's title and Coach is shown to be very supportive of his son and Jack.
  • Georgia "George" Martin: The Assistant General Manager of the Providence Falconers expansion team. During Bitty's sophomore year, she works on recruiting Jack and meets Bitty when he literally runs into her. George is the first person outside of their immediate friends and family that Jack tells about his relationship with Bitty and she proves to be nothing but supportive, encouraging Jack in his desire to tell his new teammates.
  • Alexei "Tater" Mashkov: An extroverted and friendly Russian hockey player and Jack's best friend on the Falconers. A big fan of Bitty's baking, when Jack comes out, his only concern is whether or not he can finally come over for dinner to have more of Bitty's cooking, Jack having previously refused due to the secrecy of their relationship. Tater subsequently forms a close friendship with Bitty and explains that he understands the pressure that Jack is under as Tater is the son of a famous Russian hockey player and figure skater. During the Stanley Cup playoffs, Tater suffers a leg injury and moves in with Jack and Bitty for awhile as he recovers from the injury.
  • Sebastian "Marty" St. Martin: One of the veterans on the Falconers and Jack's friend and somewhat mentor. When Jack decides to come out to his teammates, Marty is the first he tells by finally accepting Marty's long-standing request to come over for dinner as long as Bitty can join them. Marty proves to be very supportive of Jack and Bitty's relationship. Initially one of the team's two alternate captains alongside Thirdy, they are later joined by Jack as the third alternate captain.

Development
"Sports media is entirely about creating these narratives around athletes and their teams, which is why sports can be such fertile ground for transformative works in fandom."

—Ngozi Ukazu[3]

Ukazu at the 2018 Texas Teen Book Festival

Check, Please! is written and drawn by Ngozi Ukazu, a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Ukazu can't skate, but has shown to have a large amount of knowledge on hockey and hockey culture. She credits this to three months of research she did at Yale, as she was writing screenplay Hardy, starring a hockey player who falls in love with his best friend.[2] Ukazu describes Check, Please! as somewhat of a reaction to Hardy, as her screenplay was rather depressing. Hardy featured themes of "addiction, externalized and internalized homophobia, the anxiety of graduating and feelings of failure." Ukazu described Check, Please!-protagonist Eric as "born to balance that out," and she suggested that Check, Please! conceived out of the question of whether "someone like Bitty [can] survive in a world like Hardy's."[3]

Ukazu's ice hockey stories are inspired by narratives built around hockey players such as Jonathan Toews, Sidney Crosby, and Patrick Kane. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw of The Daily Dot described Ukazu's relationship with her webcomic as though Ukazu herself is part of the fandom. Ukazu draws short comic strips that were described by Baker-Whitelaw as "fanfiction of her own creation," and Ukazu's constant interactions with fans of the webcomic on Tumblr accentuates this.[3]

In 2015, Ukazu launched a Kickstarter campaign in order to publish a first volume for the webcomic. Due of its large fan base, Check, Please! quickly reached its initial goal of $15,000 USD, eventually making $74,000 USD.[4][5] A second Kickstarter campaign was launched September 2016, raising nearly $400,000 on a $32,500 goal,[6] becoming the most-funded webcomic on Kickstarter. In June 2017, it was announced that First Second Books would publish two volumes of the webcomic.[7] A third Kickstarter campaign was begun in November 2019 so Ukazu could launch what she described as a "chirpbook," collecting Bitty's best tweets to round out the Check Please! story. Within a single day, Ukazu surpassed her original goal of $26,000.

Reception

Chloe Goodwin of The Rocky Mountain Collegian described the story of Check, Please! as "addictive" and praised Ukazu as an "extraordinary artist". Goodwin mainly applauded Uzaku for her worldbuilding, describing the setting of Check, Please! as "a vast detailed universe."[1] Writing for The A.V. Club, Caitlin Rosberg described Check, Please! as a "passion project", praising "the clear care and love that goes into every page of content." Rosberg particularly enjoyed Ukazu's characterization, stating that each character has his own motivation and character quirks, even if they're all supposed to be "bros".[4]

In 2017, Check, Please! won a Reuben Award in the "Online Comic: Long Form" category.[8] In 2019, it won the Harvey Award for Digital Book of the Year,[9] and an Ignatz award for Outstanding comic.[10]

References
  1. Goodwin, Chloe (2014-02-17). "Webcomic Spotlight: "Check Please!"". The Rocky Mountain Collegian.
  2. Lawson, Emma (2016-04-06). "Baking, Bros And Beyonce: Should You Be Reading 'Check, Please'?". Comics Alliance. Archived from the original on 2016-04-13.
  3. Baker-Whitelaw, Gavia (2015-05-19). "How a webcomic about hockey players became a cult favorite on Tumblr". The Daily Dot.
  4. Hennum, Shea; O'Neill, Tim; Rosberg, Caitlin; Sava, Oliver (2015-11-24). "Self-published Check, Please! shows the value of a passion project". The A.V. Club.
  5. Fitzsimons, Kate (2015-06-05). "More To Come 153: Ngozi Ukazu of Check Please Interview". Publishers Weekly.
  6. Burt, Kayti (2016-10-24). "Check, Please! – The Queer Hockey Bros Webcomic You Should Be Reading". Den of Geek.
  7. Serrao, Nivea (2017-06-30). "Ngozi Ukazu's 'Check, Please!' To Be Published In Two Volumes". Entertainment Weekly.
  8. "71st Annual Reuben Award Winners Announced!". National Cartoonists Society. May 27, 2017.
  9. Arrant, Chris (October 5, 2019). "And the Winners of the 2019 HARVEY AWARDS are..." Newsarama.
  10. Chiu-Tabet, Christopher. "2019 Ignatz Award Winners Announced". Multiversity Comics. Multiversity Comics. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
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