Jean AKA Jeannie AKA Jeanie is a film, book, and magazine reviewer for a national magazine. Most of Jean’s work is done through email, which means he doesn't have to go into the office.
On a trip to find a gift for his girlfriend, Jean found an empty Genie Bottle. Upon picking up this bottle, Jean became the bottle’s new genie-powered occupant. Not only was Jean turned into a genie, but the bottle turned him into what he believed a genie of the bottle should look like. Which, due to his fascination with a classic 60s TV show, turned him into a busty blonde woman.
Whoops, my faulty for being lazy. I assumed that the font we’re using doesn’t have an accented capital E. Page 411 makes it clear that it does, though. I’ll correct it ASAP.
No, actually, the sex of the individual determines the spelling: fiancé refers to a male, whereas fiancée is the term for an engaged female.
Differentiating spelling like that is a French thing; same with brunet (male) and brunette (female) – in both cases, the pronunciation is the same, only the spelling changes.
In modern English usage, the distinction is becoming increasingly uncertain, and is often disregarded in practice, as English speakers, particularly non-Brits, don’t tend to understand the etymology behind the difference.
Man. It just occurred to me how little presence Belle Lows has in this comic. Between Jean’s behavior and her lack of ANY votes in the current poll, it seems like she barely qualifies as a character.
I think she’s somewhat important as far as Jean’s ability to hold a romance, plus being part of Jean’s old “lifestyle”. It would be good that CD Rudd would include her more into the story than just being a piece of meat that Jean used to hammered “herself”.
Also even if Jean was in the current poll, he wouldn’t be getting any votes by those women at the party either. I honestly love the shock look on Jean’s face here. That’s a big bruise to “her” ego.
As people can only vote for only one character, the poll is a bit skewed. I think Belle is a valuable character in the story. She’s been interesting every time she has shown up. If it had been a multi-vote poll, I would have checked her. Since I could only vote once, I went with Rodge, who I wouldn’t even consider a secondary character at this point. Between working with Neil, his crush on Natalie, and being Jeanie’s sports watching buddy/back-up Jean impersonator, he is part of the main crew in my opinion.
Araceli comes next. As she is a ruthless rival with Jeanie for Neil’s attention, she is outside the main crew, but still very important. Guano is obviously connected to her plot too. Caley has potential. The fact that Araceli is currently controlled by a child has some interesting possibilities.
Belle is an interesting foil by being a strong reminder to Jeanie of her old life. She’s also a good jealousy generator by preferring Neil Jean in the sack to the real Jean. And it’s complicated jealousy, as you can’t be sure if she is jealous of Neil or Belle. I suspect it is both.
I’m not sure about Agent Anderson. I’m not immediately interested in a story of a government agent trying to track Jeanie down. I’m not against it either. I’ve liked all the storylines so far, so if CD had an interest in doing it, I expect it would be good.
I’m not sure about Rouyaa. I really liked that storyline. It gave some nice emotional resonance to the comic, but it was its own little story within the universe. If this were a comic book, it felt like it would have been a stand-alone, limited-run title that was connected to IDoJB, not something that would run in the main book. I’m not opposed to her coming up again, but it feels like her story is done for the moment.
I don’t know if we need to see Kazom here again. He is a Melvin Chronicles character now, and the version here and the MC version don’t feel that much alike. MC’s Kazom is a lot more in-your-face than the perpetually sleeping Kazom of IDoJB. While I liked the original Kazom as a Jeanie so close to having exhausted his magical energy that he spent all his time napping, I get MC making a change. I character that sleeps all the time worked fine as a guest in one chapter. You don’t want a character that does nothing at the center of your comic. Anyway, I just feel bring Kazom back in this strip would underline the way the character was re-written.
Kattgirl: He’s an EDITOR, for crying out loud. He stabs the beloved children of other writers with his steely nibs till they bleed red and blue blood. He tears out great chunks of their flesh, the very best parts, and throws them on the floor the better to stomp them to bland, tasteless tatters.
If he’s worth his chair, his awful, searing eye shows no mercy. When he shows weakness, we owe him none, for as an editor, he has no feelings, except maniacal cruelty.
And here you are, excusing his failings as if he were a mere CREATOR! PFAH!
[Ahem. Says one who has been on both sides of the desk.]
Rodge is supposedly “you” right now Jean and yet you expect every ex-girlfriend you used to date at the party to go fawning over him? How was that suppose to convince them about men sleeping around as natural? At most it would just affirmed what they already think of you!
For Rodge himself, I’m impress that he’s honourably standing up to his statement of being engaged, even if it’s a big fat lie. If anything, he’s making Jean look like he matured since. Like a hair’s width.
It makes me wonder if becoming a genie (and thus a servant by nature), as well as a woman, is not some sort of karmic retribution for being an egotistical womanizer.
ijuin you need to remember that Jeanie has two nature to her and both of those nature are doing battle with each other and there is a massive conflict between those two natures. Fun part of Jeanie in a Bottle is to watching that battle between her OLD MALE Self who is egotistical, self assured, can operate independently from other people and who is full of himself that is a womanizer of self importance that the world revolve around him alone VS her NEW FEMALE SELF THAT A GENIE which is suppose to be kind of motherly, gentle, kind, submissive, obedient, willingly grants wishes. Talk about extremes and such, her male side or what left of it is about as far to one extreme as being a female genie is on the other side and I am not just talking about gender either.
Jeanie is basically the spark plug of this series and causes most of the trouble that happens. Neil is basically just a side kick and a place for Jeanie to carry on her antics and such. Everybody else that come into this orbit revolve around those two and are basically just extra looking for work at Jeanie Bottle. That is one reason that CD Rudd shouldn’t mess with her too much, because, Jeanie has just the right kind of magic to run a cartoon series to get the readers involve and giving there opinions and such. CD Rudd can bend and twist Jeanie a little bit, she might even get a little romantically involved with Neil occasionally and be OK, but, if Jeanie ever get married to Neil, it will be the beginning of the end of the series like the TV series that this is a parody of.
As far as having something that everybody love or even love to hate, CD Rudd got exactly what he wants. Any serious modification of Jeanie and how she does things could be the beginning of the end of Jeanie in a Bottle, because, Jeanie would run out of magic.
Jeanie looks cute here, there’s just something about a girl in a sweater particularly an oversized one. Something I agree with Newton Davis from the movie house sitter on.
You can make bad work look okay, and mediocre work look good, and do it without sacrificing your credibility as reviewer.
Basically you say positive things about creator that will quote well, and avoid actually praising his work. Reverse ad hominem. Works in book reviews.
Jeanie’s making a classic male mistake–she thinks girls are attracted to men with good looks, the way men are attracted to women.
Instead, while looks have some effect, women are attracted to personality and status. Rodge doesn’t act like a babe magnet, so he’s not one. (And as others have noted, the women in the room mostly know Jean through bad experience.)
Also, kudos to Rodge for being honorable.
And Jeanie? Let Rodge write a “guest review”, by “a friend who likes this kind of movie”–and don’t let the copy editor touch it. Circle all of Rodge’s review, and write “STET” in the margin.
But you know–what I really want is for Rodge and Jeanie to watch the movie again together, and for Rodge to convince Jeanie that, taken on its own terms, the movie is just a ton of fun.
I think now is the time for Rodge to comfort Jeanie. Her self esteem, as a man, has taken a major hit, supporting her as a woman might earn him some points.
I’m wondering exactly what Rodge means when he says he wouldn’t cheat on his fiancee, especially since he told himself in the first panel of the previous comic that he guessed it was all right to hit on some ladies now that Jeanie had left. It seems like Rodge didn’t put a lot of thought into what he said to Jeanie, so it sounds sincere to me. Maybe it’s what Rodge really believes, if he ever gets a real fiancee.
Shoulder Natalie is really an aspect of Rodge’s personality. Obviously not an aspect that gets heard very often (not at all in Las Vegas), but Rodge is responsible enough to watch his niece Caley. It would be more realistic to have Rodge just think, “Wait, I’m supposed to be Jean here, and I already told Jean’s boss I’m engaged. People will think Jean is cheating. And besides…”
Actually what I really believe is, is that Rodge is starting to believe his own BS and is starting to think something else is true than what is really true. For all I know, Rodge may still think that he has a shot at Jeanie or even Natalie too. Rodge is still vain, but, slightly different than what Jean was.
I am thinking that Rodge is currently deluding himself of what really going on. I am also sure that he going to fine out that soon enough.
This is a two day conference and at the end of the conference would be a good time for Belle to show up. And Rodge sill in Jean look alike and he turn to Jeanie and says: Who is Belle?
I think I know why Bell was not 100% satisfied. If Jean can have sex with more than one woman a night he sure was not putting much effort into their pleasure. No wonder Neil really blew her hair back when they had sex he probably took his time with her.
However, there is one “W” in the word that means one more than one and one less than three …
This letter has ‘double’ in its name, so it’s ok.
I’ll double you. ;P
“The smart-ass is strong in these.”
“fiancée” not “finacee”. I’ll admit I’m not certain how critical the accent mark is, though.
It’s an alternative spelling, duh.
Whoops, my faulty for being lazy. I assumed that the font we’re using doesn’t have an accented capital E. Page 411 makes it clear that it does, though. I’ll correct it ASAP.
Also, “fiancée” rather than “finacée”. 🙂
Now back to lurking creepily in the background….
Wow, double fail on my part!
Pretty sure the accent determines gender, as would pronunciation.
No, actually, the sex of the individual determines the spelling: fiancé refers to a male, whereas fiancée is the term for an engaged female.
Differentiating spelling like that is a French thing; same with brunet (male) and brunette (female) – in both cases, the pronunciation is the same, only the spelling changes.
In modern English usage, the distinction is becoming increasingly uncertain, and is often disregarded in practice, as English speakers, particularly non-Brits, don’t tend to understand the etymology behind the difference.
I think the meaning was grammatical gender of words, not gender of people.
Man. It just occurred to me how little presence Belle Lows has in this comic. Between Jean’s behavior and her lack of ANY votes in the current poll, it seems like she barely qualifies as a character.
I think she’s somewhat important as far as Jean’s ability to hold a romance, plus being part of Jean’s old “lifestyle”. It would be good that CD Rudd would include her more into the story than just being a piece of meat that Jean used to hammered “herself”.
Also even if Jean was in the current poll, he wouldn’t be getting any votes by those women at the party either. I honestly love the shock look on Jean’s face here. That’s a big bruise to “her” ego.
As people can only vote for only one character, the poll is a bit skewed. I think Belle is a valuable character in the story. She’s been interesting every time she has shown up. If it had been a multi-vote poll, I would have checked her. Since I could only vote once, I went with Rodge, who I wouldn’t even consider a secondary character at this point. Between working with Neil, his crush on Natalie, and being Jeanie’s sports watching buddy/back-up Jean impersonator, he is part of the main crew in my opinion.
Araceli comes next. As she is a ruthless rival with Jeanie for Neil’s attention, she is outside the main crew, but still very important. Guano is obviously connected to her plot too. Caley has potential. The fact that Araceli is currently controlled by a child has some interesting possibilities.
Belle is an interesting foil by being a strong reminder to Jeanie of her old life. She’s also a good jealousy generator by preferring Neil Jean in the sack to the real Jean. And it’s complicated jealousy, as you can’t be sure if she is jealous of Neil or Belle. I suspect it is both.
I’m not sure about Agent Anderson. I’m not immediately interested in a story of a government agent trying to track Jeanie down. I’m not against it either. I’ve liked all the storylines so far, so if CD had an interest in doing it, I expect it would be good.
I’m not sure about Rouyaa. I really liked that storyline. It gave some nice emotional resonance to the comic, but it was its own little story within the universe. If this were a comic book, it felt like it would have been a stand-alone, limited-run title that was connected to IDoJB, not something that would run in the main book. I’m not opposed to her coming up again, but it feels like her story is done for the moment.
I don’t know if we need to see Kazom here again. He is a Melvin Chronicles character now, and the version here and the MC version don’t feel that much alike. MC’s Kazom is a lot more in-your-face than the perpetually sleeping Kazom of IDoJB. While I liked the original Kazom as a Jeanie so close to having exhausted his magical energy that he spent all his time napping, I get MC making a change. I character that sleeps all the time worked fine as a guest in one chapter. You don’t want a character that does nothing at the center of your comic. Anyway, I just feel bring Kazom back in this strip would underline the way the character was re-written.
Uh, Robert –
Panel 4: “OTHER THEN” -> “other than”
Panel 5: “FINACÉE” -> “fiancée” (‘a’ & ‘n’ got transposed)
Hm, Rodge can’t spell; well, no real surprise there.
Ugh, I really dropped the ball on this page. I blame extreme exhaustion.
Also, be sure to force-reload the page to get the updated file.
Eh, no big deal; psychological studies have shown over and over that people frequently see what they expect to see. Even editors. You do a great job.
Kattgirl: He’s an EDITOR, for crying out loud. He stabs the beloved children of other writers with his steely nibs till they bleed red and blue blood. He tears out great chunks of their flesh, the very best parts, and throws them on the floor the better to stomp them to bland, tasteless tatters.
If he’s worth his chair, his awful, searing eye shows no mercy. When he shows weakness, we owe him none, for as an editor, he has no feelings, except maniacal cruelty.
And here you are, excusing his failings as if he were a mere CREATOR! PFAH!
[Ahem. Says one who has been on both sides of the desk.]
Hey, I’m not that kind of editor! I just fix spelling mistakes, lol.
Rodge is supposedly “you” right now Jean and yet you expect every ex-girlfriend you used to date at the party to go fawning over him? How was that suppose to convince them about men sleeping around as natural? At most it would just affirmed what they already think of you!
For Rodge himself, I’m impress that he’s honourably standing up to his statement of being engaged, even if it’s a big fat lie. If anything, he’s making Jean look like he matured since. Like a hair’s width.
Completely agree–especially the point about his honor.
I think that Jeanie’s next conclusion will be that Rodge must have screwed something up to cause the girls not to like him.
Jean’s EGO is unbelievable.
Agreed. Every time I think Jeannie’s head can’t get any fatter, she proves me wrong.
It makes me wonder if becoming a genie (and thus a servant by nature), as well as a woman, is not some sort of karmic retribution for being an egotistical womanizer.
ijuin: I’m pretty darn sure. I wish she’d start getting some lessons about that, along with Neil taking the Master role seriously.
ijuin you need to remember that Jeanie has two nature to her and both of those nature are doing battle with each other and there is a massive conflict between those two natures. Fun part of Jeanie in a Bottle is to watching that battle between her OLD MALE Self who is egotistical, self assured, can operate independently from other people and who is full of himself that is a womanizer of self importance that the world revolve around him alone VS her NEW FEMALE SELF THAT A GENIE which is suppose to be kind of motherly, gentle, kind, submissive, obedient, willingly grants wishes. Talk about extremes and such, her male side or what left of it is about as far to one extreme as being a female genie is on the other side and I am not just talking about gender either.
Jeanie is basically the spark plug of this series and causes most of the trouble that happens. Neil is basically just a side kick and a place for Jeanie to carry on her antics and such. Everybody else that come into this orbit revolve around those two and are basically just extra looking for work at Jeanie Bottle. That is one reason that CD Rudd shouldn’t mess with her too much, because, Jeanie has just the right kind of magic to run a cartoon series to get the readers involve and giving there opinions and such. CD Rudd can bend and twist Jeanie a little bit, she might even get a little romantically involved with Neil occasionally and be OK, but, if Jeanie ever get married to Neil, it will be the beginning of the end of the series like the TV series that this is a parody of.
As far as having something that everybody love or even love to hate, CD Rudd got exactly what he wants. Any serious modification of Jeanie and how she does things could be the beginning of the end of Jeanie in a Bottle, because, Jeanie would run out of magic.
In this case, she’s probably relying on actual experience. Can’t much argue with that.
Jeanie looks cute here, there’s just something about a girl in a sweater particularly an oversized one. Something I agree with Newton Davis from the movie house sitter on.
You can make bad work look okay, and mediocre work look good, and do it without sacrificing your credibility as reviewer.
Basically you say positive things about creator that will quote well, and avoid actually praising his work. Reverse ad hominem. Works in book reviews.
Jeanie’s making a classic male mistake–she thinks girls are attracted to men with good looks, the way men are attracted to women.
Instead, while looks have some effect, women are attracted to personality and status. Rodge doesn’t act like a babe magnet, so he’s not one. (And as others have noted, the women in the room mostly know Jean through bad experience.)
Also, kudos to Rodge for being honorable.
And Jeanie? Let Rodge write a “guest review”, by “a friend who likes this kind of movie”–and don’t let the copy editor touch it. Circle all of Rodge’s review, and write “STET” in the margin.
But you know–what I really want is for Rodge and Jeanie to watch the movie again together, and for Rodge to convince Jeanie that, taken on its own terms, the movie is just a ton of fun.
Uh Robert, is the misspelling of two intentional or not in the commentary?
“No one?”
I feel like I should shout “Third base!”.
Naw. Third base is I Don’t Know.
No one is in right field…
You can always count on Rodge to mess something up!
He could pick something up or see if they’ll deliver.
Talk to the maitre- d; tell him “like for Jorge”, and discreetly slip him a single hundred, no more, no less.
Remember, “Jorge” is two syllables, with a very soft jay and gee. Do not emphasize the initial syllable.
I think now is the time for Rodge to comfort Jeanie. Her self esteem, as a man, has taken a major hit, supporting her as a woman might earn him some points.
I’m wondering exactly what Rodge means when he says he wouldn’t cheat on his fiancee, especially since he told himself in the first panel of the previous comic that he guessed it was all right to hit on some ladies now that Jeanie had left. It seems like Rodge didn’t put a lot of thought into what he said to Jeanie, so it sounds sincere to me. Maybe it’s what Rodge really believes, if he ever gets a real fiancee.
Tom, I figured he listened to the “shoulder Natalie”, and changed his mind.
Shoulder Natalie is really an aspect of Rodge’s personality. Obviously not an aspect that gets heard very often (not at all in Las Vegas), but Rodge is responsible enough to watch his niece Caley. It would be more realistic to have Rodge just think, “Wait, I’m supposed to be Jean here, and I already told Jean’s boss I’m engaged. People will think Jean is cheating. And besides…”
Hey, wake up!
Anyway, Shoulder Neil and Shoulder Natalie are a much cooler way to show second thoughts. I’m hoping for a quartet like this one from El Goonish Shive.
Actually what I really believe is, is that Rodge is starting to believe his own BS and is starting to think something else is true than what is really true. For all I know, Rodge may still think that he has a shot at Jeanie or even Natalie too. Rodge is still vain, but, slightly different than what Jean was.
I am thinking that Rodge is currently deluding himself of what really going on. I am also sure that he going to fine out that soon enough.
This is a two day conference and at the end of the conference would be a good time for Belle to show up. And Rodge sill in Jean look alike and he turn to Jeanie and says: Who is Belle?
Poor Rodge messing up by not being a total cheating jerk, somehow I don’t see Jean catching this as a good trait without it being pointed out to her.
Maybe not – but when you’re writing 2 as a word it should be TWO L’s 😉 lol
Oh my god, do my failures on this comic ever cease?!
I think I know why Bell was not 100% satisfied. If Jean can have sex with more than one woman a night he sure was not putting much effort into their pleasure. No wonder Neil really blew her hair back when they had sex he probably took his time with her.