R. K. Milholland has long been a master of screwing with his audience’s expectations and desires. Part of this lies with the very nature of Something Positive, which takes an absolute delight in cruelty to its cast (and thus indirectly to fans who love those characters). Nor is Milholland discriminate in his torments; even his primary protagonist, Davan, often feels the crack of the whip as Milholland finds more misery to pile on his cast. Of course, this shouldn’t be news to any long-time reader of the strip, seeing that Milholland has made the torture of his characters a work of art. Still, I look at the latest strip and feel a sense of déjà vu when I saw PeeJee snuggling up to Davan in bed.

Part of this lies in the very nature of Davan’s existence as the comic’s rotary blade for incoming fecal matter. If there’s any one law of S*P, it is this: nothing good can happen to Davan for long. A combination of his own snarky behavior and Milholland’s joy in creating suffering pretty much ensure that Davan’s happiness will be fleeting, at best. But mostly it’s because I see footsteps in the snow, and it is our own: last year we witnessed this before, only with PeeJee in the hospital, feeling miserable with chicken pox… and for Davan to change plans to be with her.

The deluded among Milholland’s fans (which included me) thought this could lead to a paradigm shift for the strip, with Davan and PeeJee finding a measure of happiness in each other’s arms. Milholland quickly beat any such romanticism about of his fans by having not only Davan sleeping around, but for PeeJee herself to date other people as well. Nor was it a matter of jealousy or revenge. Instead, looking at this latest strip with jaded eyes (and truly, can you read S*P any other way?) you see that yes, Davan and PeeJee do love each other… but as friends. But as lovers? Nice try, Milholland, but as they say, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.