For those trying to figure out why this story grates so: its trying for the same magical ambiguity that Calvin & Hobbes would sometimes employ where Watterson would occasionally not bother to establish that events were happening mostly in Calvin’s imagination. Unlike that strip though, Crabgrass doesn’t have the benefit of having a super narrow focus centered on a single character’s point of view meaning it is incredibly hard to suspend disbelief and go along with the lead characters’ ruse here.
There are only two ways a story like this can go: Either its a ruse and the audience’s time has been wasted by demanding they take things seriously or its all to be taken at face value and the comic is now broken with regular people walking around with magical objects that work for no good reason. Either way it speaks to a greater problem Crabgrass has in that it doesn’t know if it wants to be Calvin & Hobbes, the Simpsons, or The Fairly Oddparents and it makes for a flat, uneven tone where you’re supposed to go along with middling family drama and humor alongside magical ice cream trucks and santa claus.
For those trying to figure out why this story grates so: its trying for the same magical ambiguity that Calvin & Hobbes would sometimes employ where Watterson would occasionally not bother to establish that events were happening mostly in Calvin’s imagination. Unlike that strip though, Crabgrass doesn’t have the benefit of having a super narrow focus centered on a single character’s point of view meaning it is incredibly hard to suspend disbelief and go along with the lead characters’ ruse here.
There are only two ways a story like this can go: Either its a ruse and the audience’s time has been wasted by demanding they take things seriously or its all to be taken at face value and the comic is now broken with regular people walking around with magical objects that work for no good reason. Either way it speaks to a greater problem Crabgrass has in that it doesn’t know if it wants to be Calvin & Hobbes, the Simpsons, or The Fairly Oddparents and it makes for a flat, uneven tone where you’re supposed to go along with middling family drama and humor alongside magical ice cream trucks and santa claus.