Weird Romance: Cathy and Alex’s Wedding

Following up from my previous mega-post on Cathy’s relationship with Alex, which I’d been meaning to do, but never got around to.  Well, no time like the present.  Especially in the month of mid-February.  And it only took 2 years to get to this point.

For those who forgot, or don’t want to go to the trouble of refreshing their memories, Cathy was going out with a gym instructor who was much younger than her.  Despite the age gap, they had a healthier relationship than she’d ever had with Irving.  Even so, she still had misgivings, as they didn’t have much in common.  And it all ended with Alex proposing to her on Valentine’s Day with no set-up or foreshadowing.  Cathy naturally didn’t accept the terms gracefully, and reluctantly bowed out.

Even though she broke the proposal off, she still felt affection for Alex, and there was the occasional reference to the man, she didn’t hear from him until six years later when he became socially relevant again.

Before we get to the main event, I might as well show a few more instances of the ever-elusive Emerson, who I presented in my last post, and found some more comics of the pre-Alex-like boyfriend.

Despite his brief appearance, Emerson was significant enough to make an appearance in an early Cathy book, What's a nice single girl doing with a double bed?! as part of the cast introduction.

As we can see, Emerson was simply too good for Cathy.  Also included is Emerson's only known appearance within a Sunday comic - a rarity within a rarity.

Interestingly enough, during these early strips there was the brief introduction of another Alex, completely different from our Alex.

Then after a long absence filled with more dramatic tensions with Irving, shopping, Woman's Lib, binging and Mommy issues, Emerson showed up again.

After this last hurrah, Emerson never showed up again.  Now that we've gotten through the preliminaries, it's time to move on to the good stuff.

This continues right after where I left off, so in case you haven't clicked the link earlier, here's a reminder.

And that would be Alex's last appearance.  Unlike Emerson who was practically a non-entity and drama-free (as well as humour-free), Alex would be sporadically name-dropped every once in awhile.

All that would change on August 20 2001, when Cathy would be upset over the news of Alex getting married... and not to her.

Around this time, Irving went bald, and since I wasn't keeping up with Cathy, only sporadically catching up on it in other papers, I had no idea what prompted this sudden male pattern baldness.  Turns out it was from as all things Irving, extreme machismo.

And finally, after spending so much time off-panel, we get to see Alex again for the first time in 6 years, and we see he hasn't changed a bit.

After the wedding, we get one last bit of closure ending in the only Cathy way it possibly could - eating a pie with Mom.