Or is the real problem — that one is not “spherical.” That these are the concerns of the Non-Spherical Man?… Now why could that not be one of their superhero-movie superheroes — The Non-Spherical Man??
In the early versions of this comic strip, Non-Spherical Man is simply a square man who, while knowing that a measure of roundness is what’s called for in life, simply can’t manage to find anything remotely radial in himself. We are frequently disappointed in these early strips to find time and again N-S Man briefly acting like someone a little cool, rather calm, who takes it as it comes, who is not concerned with what They think, and so forth, but the roundness of the world finally works into the angularity of his soul and results inevitably in him having a complete freak out. (Non-spherical man shirt symbol: Spherical Man.) Most N-S Man strips from this period end with N-S Man having some kind of major spastic event, revealing him to be totally uncool, with all kinds of unshared judgments and assumptions.
Facing flagging sales, the strip was re-envisioned in the 1960s, making N-S Man more misshapen than explicitly square, round in some ways, angular in others, each of these stories ending with the same ambiguous picture of the hero, looking out at the reader in such a way that you can’t quite tell if he is doing a really good job of containing a freak out or is just legitimately unflustered or unbothered by the events of the preceding narrative — events that would definitely have been jarring to any actually square person, with established protocols being ignored, authority and sensible rules flouted, things that were “just not a good idea” embraced with abandon….
When sales continued to plummet, the title was slated to be shelved and there arose a heated internal debate among the strip’s creators about how to resolve this essential ambiguity of the character for the final episode: was he essentially square but “holding it in” or had he actually learned something about resignation and letting things be and not caring about what Others think? Had the cool counsel of his slick sidekick and “black friend” Rick Warrior finally had its effect? Had he grown comfortable in his own skin at long last?
The unanimous conclusion was — he had a totally massive spastic meltdown, lasting from the very first frame to the very last in the book, in which he not only freaks out about everything that had occurred in every previous strip but freaks out about not having freaked out about it in real time, etc…. Tears, red in the face, knowing he could only blame himself, knowing he was to blame, him….! Freaked out about mortality, freaked out about politics, freaked out about never having “found myself, let alone a partner….” In a way, it really was the perfect end to the Non-Spherical Man strip, because now no one wanted to hear anything about him ever again.
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