Below you will find four
entries in the 2007 Massey College orientation-week
scavenger hunt (item six). The assignment was as follows: each House
(there are five college Houses to which residents belong; non-residents
collectively form House VI) had to create a live-action version of a
West of Bathurst
strip. Four of the six Houses came through. Here, in order
of House number, are the original strips followed by the
recreations.
Please note that while some of the entrants have given me permission to publish their names, others wish to remain anonymous.
House II
Ah, yes: the Strip With Four Extremely Similar Panels. I do like the way House II handles it, however:
Look at that: a Casey lookalike! At Massey! This
year! The only major difference is the tie (Casey would
never wear a red tie. I don't think he even
owns a red tie. He's all green, all the time). Marie's facial expressions here also please me quite a lot.
House IV
Good old first-day-at-Massey-strip-mark-two. House IV's interpretation:
In this strip, put together by Jordan Poppenk, the first two panels are
pretty accurate (despite Baldwin's sex-change) and demonstrate that I
am not very good at perspective. Then things get a little weird,
albeit in a fun way. Marie is here played by the back of Ali
Doroudian's head; Heather Sheridan makes a suitably perky Wendy.
I
must say that I
utterly love panel two, in which you can see the Massey porter's lodge in all its glory.
House V
There is a reason House V has seemingly foolishly chosen a strip that
involves seven characters. Let us explore that reason:
Poor Marie can't keep a straight face here. In fact, the only
person who can is Rahim, who doesn't actually belong to House V at all
(he's an alumnus). As well, various House V-ers have revealed
that they sort of ran out of people and had to keep switching roles; as
you can see, Jeff Rybak starts out as Felicia and then turns into
Cousin It or Grendel or something to play Bleachy. (I am
wondering about the monster arms in panel 3. I am liking them,
but I am wondering about them.) House V chose this challenging
strip because the guy with the huge beard in panel 1 is, in fact, the
actual guy with the actual huge beard used as an actual model for the
character of Barry (the real bearded guy is also named Barry).
House VI:
I think it is fairly obvious why House VI chose this strip:
The House VI-ers made this recreation about five minutes before the end
of the scavenger hunt; the lack of word balloons is thus
understandable. However, as you may be able to see, House VI also
scores major brownie points by putting into the recreated strip the man
who served as the model for one of the characters...and, moreover,
putting him in
in the same shirt he is wearing in the comic. The other character in the strip is me, though that is
not
me in the recreation. I think the substitute is doing a pretty
darned good job, however. Mr. Batman is touching his face with
the wrong hand; otherwise, we've got a nice little last-minute
masterpiece here.
Though Houses I and III did not come through on item 6, I'm sure they
completed it in spirit.
The curious should note that the
non-residents won the scavenger hunt in the end.
