Watch Your Head
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''Watch Your Head'' is a
webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be co ...
and former daily syndicated
comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...
written and illustrated by Cory Thomas, focusing on the lives of six students at a fictional
historically black university Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American community. Mo ...
. Based upon Thomas' experiences as a student at
Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" and accredited by the Middle States Commissi ...
, ''Watch Your Head'' was first published in Howard's newspaper, ''The Hilltop''. The strip was picked up for national distribution by the Washington Post Writers Group (WPWG) in 2006, and was launched on March 27. ''Watch Your Head'' ended as a newspaper strip June 1, 2014. It returned online as a three-strip-a-week webcomic on August 4, 2014. The new strip starts over at a similar, but different, university with many tweaks to the main characters and a nearly absent role for the former protagonist, Cory. On January 9, 2015, Thomas announced that he was scaling back the strip to twice a week.


Characters

''Watch Your Head's'' main protagonist is Cory, an intelligent, yet somewhat socially awkward, young freshman at historically black Oliver Otis University. Other characters featured in the strip include Cory's three best friends: anti-social
Black nationalist Black nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a race (human categorization), race, and which seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity. Black natio ...
Omar, preacher's son-turned-womanizer and self-proclaimed ladies man Quincy, and Kevin, one of the few white students at Otis. Also appearing are Cory's shady former roommate Jason, his on-again/off-again love interest Robin, Robin's best friend (and Kevin's girlfriend, later wife) Dana, and Cory's one-time girlfriend January. Jason pretends to be a streetwise thug, but the truth is that he is the spoiled brat of doting rich parents and he makes things difficult for poor Cory. Kevin is at Otis on an
ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...
scholarship A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need. Scholarsh ...
, but he is much more of an
art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
ist than an athlete. Kevin and Cory share an enthusiasm for
comic books A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
. Self-centered Robin was completely unaware of how much Cory adored her, and when she finally realized it, she sent him back to January. With the strip's webcomic reboot in 2014, Kevin became the lead character in an altered version of the strip's universe (the final newspaper strips from May 2014 make intentional reference to
DC Comics DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...
' ''
Crisis on Infinite Earths "Crisis on Infinite Earths" is a 1985 American comic book crossover storyline published by DC Comics. The series, written by Marv Wolfman and pencilled by George Pérez, was first serialized as a 12-issue limited series from April 1985 to March ...
'' comic book maxiseries). The webcomic version of ''Watch Your Head'' takes place at Douglass University, where Kevin has transferred from his engineering school in Canada after presumably being in a long-distance relationship with Robin, only to find that he had been "
catfished Catfishing is a deceptive activity in which a person creates a Sockpuppet (Internet), fictional persona or Privacy concerns with social networking services, fake identity on a social networking service, usually targeting a specific victim. The ...
" by Dana. Quincy, Omar, and January (now Omar's girlfriend) also appear, while Cory has only made off-panel appearances over
video chat Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Ency ...
with Robin. Dana is unhappily married to Jason and following—at a distance—and her relationship with Kevin is developing as of early 2015.


Plot

In recent events, Cory has met a new friend, January, who has an interest in
magic Magic or Magick most commonly refers to: * Magic (supernatural), beliefs and actions employed to influence supernatural beings and forces * Ceremonial magic, encompasses a wide variety of rituals of magic * Magical thinking, the belief that unrela ...
, and works in a dentist's office as an office assistant. Kevin has been dating Robin's roommate Dana, who is smarter than Robin and not as attractive. There have been problems, due to Dana's insistence on keeping the relationship under wraps, and also with the appearance of Kevin's high school girlfriend, Lisa. Omar, whom Kevin stays with, has also taken exception to Kevin and Dana's
interracial relationship Interracial topics include: * Interracial marriage, marriage between two people of different races ** Interracial marriage in the United States *** 2009 Louisiana interracial marriage incident * Interracial adoption, placing a child of one rac ...
, and has tried to steal Dana behind Kevin's back, even though he doesn't truly like her. This has come to a head in a recent comic, and has yet to be resolved. It has also been revealed that Omar was adopted by a white mother and Asian father, and faced many problems growing up due to his ethnicity. He was once painfully bitten by a little girl classmate who thought he was made of chocolate. After spending the summer together, Cory and January started dating. Meanwhile, Robin gained a considerable amount of weight due to a break-up with her boyfriend, Steve, after she called all of the girls' numbers on his cell phone. Also in recent comics, Ericka, Quincy's on-and-off girlfriend, recently told Quincy that she was pregnant with his child. As a result, Quincy decided to take responsibility for this baby and they were almost married, but Ericka confessed that she had faked the pregnancy, and the wedding was called off. In recent strips, Corey had still not shown affection to January, and was showing interest in Robin, and there were hints that he was going to mess up his budding relationship (in typical Corey fashion). January kissed Cory, finally. This made Cory forget about Robin. It made him re-evaluate his views of Life, the Universe, and himself. It has been shown in recent comics, that Omar has somehow lost his apartment, and is now the roommate of Jason. The two have been shown butting heads, especially since Omar has killed Jason's "pet" mouse, Edgar. However, unlike Cory, Omar has held his own against Jason. Also, Kevin and Cory have become roommates. There is, however, a potential that Kevin and Cory might clash due to the presence of Dana (a sort of
Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...
) in their apartment. It is also mentioned that Quincy's on/off again girlfriend, Erika, was in some type of online relationship with Omar, which caused a fight between Quincy and Omar, which was never fully resolved to this point in the strip. It has also been shown that January has broken up with Cory, who then started to date Robin, but later broke up with Robin after the assumed death of January in late 2012. Quincy had graduated and Omar found out he has a twin sister named LeLani, who Cory has a strong interest in. Dana and Kevin have also gotten married. At the end of the strip, it is shown that Omar, after having an emotional breakdown, and a therapy session with Robin, has taken to "opening himself to the world", and embracing life, and Kevin and Dana leaving for Canada to start a family. Also Jason has forsaken his fake thug imagery for the life of an emerging businessman, reuniting with his friend Peeno after a brief estrangement. Quincy has moved in with his girlfriend and her son to be a responsible adult, and Robin finally acknowledges her love of Corey, at the least on a friendship level.


References

{{reflist


External links


''Watch Your Head'' webcomic

Cory Thomas' official website

''Watch Your Head''
at GoComics.com
Interview with Cory Thomas
at ScribbleFactory.net American comic strips African-Americans in comic strips 2006 comics debuts 2014 comics endings 2014 webcomic debuts 2010s webcomics American comedy webcomics Gag-a-day comics