My first real teenage crush was on a fellow middle school classmate. He was hot, nice, hot, athletic, hot, and the goalie for our school's ice hockey team. One day, we were the last ones in the locker room after gym class (I don't know how that ever happen, *smirk). He liked to take showers after class and that day was no different so I took my time changing. Needless to say, I think of that day often leading to the reason for my hockey player and big nose preference / fetish. I still haven't found my ice hockey player yet, but there's still time. Applicants welcome.
With that in mind, I knew I was going to like Check, Please! a webcomic that is gaining more and more fans.
Check, Please! is a wildly popular webcomic about gay hockey players at a fictional New England college. It contains a mix of elements that have proven irresistible to its many fans: thrilling hockey moments, fun college humor, and queer romance.
If your gut reaction is that gay love stories and hockey don’t pair very well, you’re not alone. But Check, Please! proves that a nontraditional sports narrative can still appeal to sports fans.
After spending most of its three-year journey as a sleeper hit among hockey fans, Check, Please! has enjoyed a massive boom in popularity over the past year. Lately the comic has gained attention from mainstream corners of the web, a sign that it might soon find an even bigger audience.
What is Check, Please! about?
Written and drawn by a grad student named Ngozi Ukazu, Check, Please! follows the adventures of a diminutive freshman named Eric Bittle, a.k.a. "Bitty," as he tries to adapt from his former life as a competitive figure skater to life on the Samwell College hockey team. (The comic’s title refers to the act of "checking," or physically blocking another hockey player as a defense strategy.)
Bitty has a couple of major secrets: He’s a gay man playing one of the world’s most notoriously homophobic sports, and he’s got a serious crush on the team’s brusque, troubled captain, Jack Zimmerman.
As the son of a major hockey star, Jack has his own problems, starting with the pressure of bearing the expectations of a bona fide sports legacy on his shoulders.
Finally, there’s the bevy of snarky bros who make up the rest of the hockey team — you might say they’re secretly the "mane" event:
…
[In] 2015, as several real-life hockey scandals took their toll on hockey fandom, more and more people began flocking to Check, Please! as a fictional antidote to reality. When Ukazu launched a Kickstarter campaign for a print edition of the first volume of the comic, fans chipped in a whopping $74,000. Since then, Check, Please! has developed a sizable, energetic fandom, with its own fandom wiki, more than 2,000 fics on the fanfic website AO3, and an endless stream of fan art for the comic’s large cast of characters.
Check, Please! is full of warmth and wit — but its success is mostly due to the appeal of its side characters, who are each interesting, entertaining, and hilarious in their own way. The standout among them is Jack’s best friend Shitty, a perpetually high, stealthily brilliant dude-bro philosophy major. – vox.com
For more on Check, Please! head over to the full story at vox.com.
The episodes are a quick read and aren't just about a horny college kid. It does mix "hockey moments, fun college humor, and queer romance."
Are there comic strips that you enjoy that have a queer theme?
h/t: omgcheckplease.tumblr.com and vox.com