Check, Please! (webcomic)

Check, Please! is a webcomic by Ngozi Udazu. It is available both online and in two printed volumes.

Bitty is the newest member of his university's hockey team. He loves baking, and showing off his figure skating moves. In fact, Bitty seems like the person least likely to score a goal, or block a shot. In fact, he is terrified of being checked. That is, for a player to flip him over their shoulder, so he'd land on his ass on the ice.

There's another issue: Bitty is gay. And he has a crush on the team captain Jack. Jack is a mess, hiding emotional baggage and a former history of drug usage behind his perfectionist regimens. There's no way that Jack would be interested in the home-baker turned college student... or would he?


 * Artistic License: Bitty applies to the college hockey program using his figure-skating background. Realistically, the college would have continued his education as a figure skating athlete on scholarship. But then, we wouldn't have a webcomic.
 * Anything But That: Bitty has this reaction when his housemates forcibly cut him off from baking in his senior year and put up BANNED posters in all the campus kitchens. Why? Because he hasn't worked on his thesis, only submitting a pie as "progress" of his work.
 * Deliberate Values Dissonance: Why Bitty is not out of the closet, and why he's scared of jocks initially. He's from the Deep South, where being gay is not looked upon kindly. In contract, when.
 * Through His Stomach: Bitty knows how to win over practically anyone by making them a pie. This is why when.
 * Tough Love: Jack insists on doing extra checking practices with Bitty. That's because a hockey player can't freeze up on the ice during a game. If Bitty can learn to not black out, it would help the team immensely. Despite Bitty hating these early-morning sessions, he admits that Jack is very right.