Attack of the Not-So-Clone

We’re back with the second installment in the history and examination of Sadie Summers, the character who Tom Batiuk wishes we’d all forget, which is exactly why we’ll be remembering her. She’d shown up in the final year of Act I as a visual Mini-Me of her older sister Cindy and proceeded to drive her into fits. But with 1992 comes the jump four years ahead to Act II. Funky, at this point, is bumming around while Les has gotten a job teaching at the high school he hated so much that he spent graduation trashing it and everyone there.

But much like Les, Batty was unable to let go of the old high school so we’re introduced to the new generation of Westview High students which, at the start, is basically just Wally Winkerbean, his best friend Monroe Madison and Sadie. Demon Seed’s Act II incarnation first shows up in early September in the requisite introduction week.

A few things to note. First is that much like her sister, Cindy’s designated role is The Most Popular Girl at Westview HS, a role that will later be filled by Jessica Darling (whose father, Jon Darling, was murdered), Rana Howard (whose biological father was blown up, first adoptive father was also blown up, and second adoptive father was not blown up), Mallory Brooks (cannot speak on father status) and Maris Rogers (ditto) with each being more irrelevant than the last. Also much like her sister, Sadie will have hangers-on though unlike Cindy, who only had Carrie, she’ll one up her sister by having two of them: the girl with the tall hair is Tiffany while the one with the longer hair is Courtney but don’t get too attached because despite hanging around during all of Sadie’s high school time they don’t have much in the way of characterization. So little in fact that Courtney will wind up being an early victim — possibly even the first — of the Tom Batiuk Name Change Special when her name is randomly changed to Brittany a few years later.

The second thing is that we’re introduced to the idea that having to follow in Cindy’s footsteps is somewhat burdensome to Sadie. It’s something that seems tailor made for an easy and long running storyline where she does things like, I don’t know, try and find her own identity instead of retreading the same ground as her sister. But I suppose that if Batty were any other writer this site wouldn’t exist so I’ll leave it to you to guess whether or not Storytelling Rd. is long and winding or a one way dead end.

After the obligatory introduction week Sadie, unsurprisingly, next shows up at the mall after having acquired a credit card.

Like any rational person she realizes that she’s been sent free money and uses it responsibly by buying the first thing to catch her eye and immediately maxing out the card.

Unfortunately for Sadie, TB will not forget as this more or less begins the one major storyline she’ll be the centerpiece of. But before that happens, she pops up during the oft called back to week where Wally lugs around a band turkey on a leash.

But that’s just a detour for in December her credit card statement arrives and is found by her father.

Deciding that she needs to learn some responsibility and pay off her credit card debt, he forces Sadie to find a job and like any other teenager she’s thrilled about the opportunity to wageslave.

In a twist you’ll never see coming, she winds up having to get a job at Burger Barn, the fast food place that I assume rivals the previous Act I fast food hangout McArnold’s (not to be confused with that anime favorite burger joint, WcDonald’s).

Of course, Sadie treats this as the height of embarassment and pretty much every strip in this story involves her seething such as when she’s unable to take off for New Year’s…

…and her subsequent rage against the heavens for the injustice.

Showing how ahead of her time she is, Sadie takes to the job with all the enthusiasm of a generation that has yet to be born as she hits her customers with the Gen Z stare.

After a few months of this indignity she hits her goal and is free, having learned a valuable lesson along the way.

After this she generally stops being the sole focus of any major storylines herself but isn’t close to disappearing. She’ll continue to get the occasional week dedicated to her and a few months later in May 1993 she’ll share a strip for the first time with what will be probably her one real relationship throughout her time in school.

The favorite punching bag of Funky Winkerbean is introduced early in 1993 and a few months later she and Sadie interact for the first time in an otherwise inauspicious manner. We’ll have cause to revisit this pairing shortly but for now things continue to truck along as Sadie spends a week in June talking about her trip to the Mall of America.

She also tells Wally what his issues with the ladies are.

By this point One-Armed Beck’s introduction into the strip is still a few years away and Sadie, being the main high school girl, gets a few interactions like this where she basically calls Wally a dweeb. One gets the feeling that Batty had thoughts of perhaps doing an eventual romantic plot with the two of them; you know the whole pretty girl and schlub thing he loves. But similar to the couple of teased instances with Mopey Pete and Chien, if he did ever want to go with that then for whatever reason he got cold feet.

In November, Sadie joins the Poetry Club much to the surprise of Les though of course it’s simply as a scheme to try and get her grades up.

Being a woman of the people, Sadie has no need for high falutin language or fancy metaphors. Her poetry is blunt, showing her inner feelings with a refreshingly simplistic honesty.

She also makes time to talk with Susan.

A few weeks later Sadie and Mickey Lopez, the football playing daughter of Les’ work wife and eventual morose letter opener Linda Lopez, are at the mall when Sadie discovers, to her horror, that Cindy is working there and even worse is going to be moving back in with her family.

Act II (and beyond) Cindy is a far cry from Act I Cindy but there’s still a faint bit of that old sibling rivalry. Just with the roles reversed.

That closes out 1993 and with it the first couple of years of Act II. Sadie is a teenager and more of her own character so does Batty’s clone accusation stand up? While it’s obvious that he wants her to take the same mall obsessed queen bee role that Cindy had in Act I, at this point I’d say they’re still significantly different characters. Her popularity, beyond just kind of existing, comes off as being slightly less essential to Sadie than it did to Cindy. With Cindy the joke always feels like it’s just “She’s popular, isn’t that funny?” With Sadie, her popularity seems to be more about contrasting it with other things whether it’s putting her in situations meant to flummox her (like the fast food job) or by throwing her into something that otherwise seems at odds (the poetry club). Also, where Cindy was more vain and arrogant and cartoonish, Sadie comes off as a lot more low key. She’s a lot more deadpan and sarcastic than Act I Cindy tended to be.

The biggest difference between the two is that Sadie comes off as a lot nicer. Cindy in Act I is an absolute terror, one of the meanest and nastiest characters in the entire strip. This is the same girl who wanted Funky to admit that he was gay for breaking up with her (a joke that would not fly today and I’d bet was skirting the line even back in the late ’80s) and who had zero issue with trying to ruin anyone she saw as beneath her. Sadie, though, is a lot different. Granted she’s not necessarily nice to Wally as Wally was intended to be the lower rung loser of his generation but she’s not excessively nasty to him either. Nothing like Cindy basically treated Les as if he was a completely separate species as her.

Then there’s Susan. Not once does Sadie ever treat her with the level of disdain that you’d expect from an otherwise stereotypical alpha girl towards a friendless nerd. When she’s talking about how she doesn’t see Susan doing anything or asks her if all she does is poetry it never comes off to me as if she’s doing it out of any sense of meanness. It’s never done as a set up for her to put Susan down or anything like that, it just comes off as a blunt way of getting to know her. The worst you can accuse Sadie of in their interactions is being flippant but she doesn’t seem like she’s attempting to denigrate Susan or anything like that. Act I Cindy definitely would have but not Sadie. And as shown, Sadie is also friends with the ultra tomboyish Mickey, someone the Act I incarnation of her sister would have never been caught dead with. So while on a superficial level they can be similar, I still don’t feel that Sadie deserves TB’s dismissive classification of her.

That finishes part 2 of our Sadie retrospective. Next time, we’ll cover the middle years of her time in Act II to see whether or not any of this holds up.