Exclusive first look: Gay hockey rom-com Check, Please! returns for Year Five

The phenomenon of Heated Rivalry showed just how hungry audiences are for gay romance stories set in the high-stakes world of professional hockey. This wasn’t news to cartoonist Ngozi Ukazu, who built her career by feeding the craving with her webcomic, Check, Please!

“In 2017, Eric “Bitty” Bittle and Jack Zimmermann came out of the closet with a nationally televised kiss at center ice,” says Ukazu. “If people weren’t aware of this moment, it’s only because it happened in a webcomic on Tumblr.”

Credit: Check, Please!: Junior Year #26 (Image: Ngozi Ukazu)

Debuting in 2013, Check, Please! chronicled Bitty’s college years as a player on the Samwell University men’s hockey team and his budding romance with the team’s hunky captain. It became a sensation thanks to its tender central relationship and charming supporting cast of hockey bros. The A.V. Club named it one of the best comics of the 2010s, and the Kickstarter campaigns for printed editions were hugely successful, leading to First Second releasing Check, Please! as a pair of best-selling graphic novels.

It’s been six years since Ukazu wrapped up Bitty and Jack’s story, but she’s returning to Samwell University for Check, Please!: Year Five, which shifts the focus to a group of underclassmen called “The Frogs.” The A.V. Club has an exclusive first look at artwork from the new chapters, which will be serialized on the Check, Please! website starting November 19.  

“Current captain, Dex, his defensive partner, Nursey, and team goalie, Chowder, are in their senior years and thinking about their impact on Samwell hockey and each other,” says Ukazu. “The question I’ve been asking readers is one that the characters ask each other—what does Samwell hockey mean to you? Or, more simply, what does hockey mean to you? I want people to stop and think about this sport and what it currently is—and what it can be.”

Credit: Check, Please!: Year Five (Image: Ngozi Ukazu)

“I’ll be frank about hockey: the extremely practical reason why hockey has exploded is due to the demographics of the sport,” says Ukazu. “It’s rich, white, and conservative. The conservative environment provides built-in external pressures which make narrative conflict easy, and the socioeconomics and whiteness of the sport make the stories palatable for the typical romance genre reader. What I like about Check, Please!, however, is that it takes the sports tropes, hockey background, and queer romance and threads everything together with humor, bold lines, and joy.”

Having stepped away from webcomics to focus on graphic novels like last year’s Flip and a pair of New Gods stories for DC Comics, Ukazu is excited to return to the format that was so vital in helping her build a fanbase. 

“Nothing beats the community that grows around a serialized story,” says Ukazu. “I get to experience the comic alongside my readers and take part in their surprise, delight, and (sorry!) concern for the Samwell men’s hockey team. I love a graphic novel, but serializing a story can feel like an event.” 

With the surge in popularity around hockey romance, there’s an opportunity for Check, Please! to reach an even larger audience in Year Five. Ukazu’s recent works have expanded her range with supernatural body swaps and angsty cosmic gods, and it will be exciting to see how that growth shapes this new era of Check, Please!

Credit: Check, Please!: Year Five (Image: Ngozi Ukazu)

Credit: Check, Please!: Year Five (Image: Ngozi Ukazu)

Credit: Check, Please!: Year Five (Image: Ngozi Ukazu)

 

 

Join the discussion...