#010 - Trapezoid has Skewed Priorities

A retrospective of the comic's archive.

This comic was written to introduce the character of Trapezoid. Well, “character.”
And to make fun of Fox News.

I’m not sure why I didn’t give Trapezoid the same speech bubble shape as Circle. It’s possible I did that just because of how much space the round bubbles take up. I’m also not sure why I used random bold words. I guess I thought it looked newspapery? I do remember why I gave Trapezoid a different font. Trapezoid speaks in Times New Roman, a font created for use in newspapers. I do like that I gave Trapezoid multiple lines for speech and all caps. It drives home that Trapezoid is shaped like a bullhorn.

This comic was specifically about the Gabby Petito case and the Fox News coverage of it. I tagged the original comic with “missing white woman syndrome” even though it wasn’t the implied racism that bothered me (though I probably shouldn’t have admitted that). What bothered me is that the news was exploiting a family’s tragedy for money. There isn’t really any news value to a single family’s tragedy. It’s functionally more similar to a real time true crime show. Someone had just died and Fox News found a way to monetize it. I’d revisit this topic in a later comic.

Fun fact: The original comic was also tagged with “#ImpliedNecrophilia” and that tag remains uniquely mine to this day. Additional fun fact: I try to stay anonymous.