Check, Please! (webcomic)

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]

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.

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]

• Official website