If there’s one thing that is sure to turn me off from a comic, it’s an over-indulgence of wacky hijinks. Normally, the hijinks are enough to pull me out of a comic and tossing it in my “read later, maybe” pile. And in many ways, Craving Control fits that bill. However, I found myself unable to pull myself away from this train wreck in progress, and found myself truly amazed at the sheer balls of CC’s writer and his portrayal of Lalia, a rather buxom redhead with a… considerably out-of-control eating disorder. And by disorder, I mean she eats a lot (and must also have a monstrously high metabolism in that with all she’s eaten, she claims to have gained 18 lbs. since the start of the semester).

Okay. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most politically-correct of people. Hell, I despise the whole political correctness shtick and feel it’s an insidious form of censorship. But there were times when I cringed at the situations CC’s author put Lalia through… such as ripping out of her dress during a party, and in the process knocking out some guy she was trying to hug. I am not making this up. Nor am I exaggerating when I mention she later squirms (with bloated belly in the way) out of a window, snagging a power line (and pulling it loose) to swing to relative safety while gorging herself on stolen candy.

So not only is Lalia a pig (and one that would mesmerize Garfield), she’s a thief. Nor is food-theft alone in her crimes – at the same party she rummaged through someone’s closet for clothes to replace her torn dress, and then hid in that girl’s stuffed animal collection when she heard the girl returning to her room. I freely admit to lacking the imagination to think up of a hijink so wacky and so idiotic as to encompass this feat. Oh, and the power line mentioned above? It causes a fire. People get hurt. And she looks around in amazement and a coitish little “Did I do that?” on her lips. (Naturally enough she gets away scot-free.)

The comic suffers from an odd form of schizophrenia, at times desperately trying to be a comedy and other times veering over the line to a light-hearted drama. This perhaps is one of the problems CC suffers from. It doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up. Add in a decided lack of character development (among both Lalia and the secondary cast) and a plot that has a character pregnant with an idiot-ball (warning, that TV Tropes link sucked 3 hours out of my life tonight), and you are left to wonder just what it is about the comic that is worth reading.

Of course, seeing that fat people and white people are the two remaining topics that it’s safe to ridicule, it’s plain to see why our protagonist is a food-indulging busty redhead. The writer gets to combine beauty (relatively speaking) and gluttony into an attractive package to ridicule, and get away with the insults to boot. If you don’t give a damn about story, and enjoy comics that create caricatures that poke fun of others, then CC may very well amuse you (though with its intermittent update schedule, you might quickly lose interest). But if you aren’t as easily amused, or enjoy a good story to build upon your comedic tropes, then you’re better off giving Craving Control a pass and moving on to a comic that puts actual thought into its humor.