West of Bathurst



"Marie: [Admires her Oxbridge-style, college-required dining robes] Am I supposed to feel like Batman? Casey: Minus the money and the purpose in life, sure. "

- West of Bathurst

West of Bathurst is a thrice-weekly webcomic following the lives and misadventures of a library science grad student named Marie and several of her friends at fictional Davies College in Toronto. Marie struggles with procrastination, required Harry Potter-esque dining garb, ongoing guilt over an event in her past, and a mysterious best friend who may or may not be the folkloric devil. In the words of the strip's author, West of Bathurst can best be summed up as "procrastination, panic, ambiguous fantastic elements, and angst."

Can be considered a Life Embellished webcomic, since Davies is a thinly-veiled stand-in for the author's alma mater; however, she has stated that the main characters are entirely fictional.


 * Batman Gambit:
 * Ursula has alleged that was just a Batman Gambit to ensure that  would come to his rescue.
 * Dogged Nice Guy: Rahim is the Patient Friend subtrope.
 * Fairy Tale Tropes: Casey may be the folkloric devil, considering he: relies on a cane (sometimes), plays the fiddle, and is at the center of an ongoing plot which appears to involve a green coat, seven-year bargains, and souls.
 * Satan: Whether Casey is or is not the actual devil is still up for debate, but he has been known to set things on fire with his mind. Maybe.
 * Proud to Be a Geek: There is an entire page devoted to strips with Doctor Who references, and Harry Potter has come up several times as well.
 * Running Gag: The annual dousing in the Davies pond, and Casey's phone conversations with his mother about tentacles.
 * Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: Averted, in that grad students often spend much of their time independently working, and presumably actual studying and thesis writing is occurring off-panel.
 * Status Quo Is God: Averted; time is passing, and many of the characters are now alumni. Their continued presence in and around Davies is justified by the fact that some of the first strips featured alumni that never quite managed to stop hanging out at the college.
 * The Slacker: Casey doesn't quite qualify, since his work always gets done -- just eerily quickly. And then he spends the rest of his time playing violin and having mysterious meetings at Tim Hortons.
 * There Are No Therapists: The fact that Marie is actively resisting hers probably isn't helping.
 * Wacky College: Davies. They wear full robes to dinner and recite Latin grace. And then there's the architecture.
 * When I Was Your Age: The strips with Barbara marking horrid essays may qualify as a commentary on the English skills of Kids These Days.
 * Write Who You Know: Barbara, a secondary character, is a frustrated English doctoral candidate who is dismayed by the quality of some of the papers she has to mark. She may have some similarities to the author.