Heartwarming / Something*Positive

There are a ton of CMOHs in the story...usually near the end of each year. And every one uses the Black Comedy set-up to do it. One almost thinks that Milholland should work for Bryan Fuller...or vice versa.

• Early on, Fred stumbled into a Primal Scene between Monette and Lisa. Monette, knowing Fred and Faye are devout Christians, starts packing her things, but Fred stops her.
  Fred: That's the church at large's beliefs, but that doesn't make 'em mine, too. I mean... I admit, it's hard for me to understand, and I was raised to think it's wrong, but I was also raised to think segregation was a good idea, and I like to think I know better than that now, too. Look, what it boils down to is it's your life and you gotta live it how you need, I understand. And if you need your privacy or whatever, you'll get it, somehow, but don't think ya gotta go runnin' off. If you wanna stay, you're welcome to. We've grown fond of ya.
  • Further on, Monette becomes Happily Adopted into the MacIntire family.
• Fred's speech to Faye just before their wedding.
• While Davan's tellings paint his as a Hilariously Abusive Childhood, this strip showcases otherwise.
• A mid-year CMoH occurred when Davan overslept for his Soul-Crushing Desk Job.
  • This one confirms that, while also being a moment of heartwarming. Kharisma saying she values you enough not to be the worst person in the world? That she took enough time away from being into her own shit to actually value you? That she asks you to do something to make yourself less unhappy? That's both how bad the job is and how much she'd grown (not very much, but it's there).
• At the tail end of a crossover with Queen of Wands, after Davan has spent hours talking to a strange woman, his girlfriend comes home and shows how much she trusts him.
• Mike fills Davan in on Branwen's life growing up, ending it by saying that Davan is likely the best boyfriend she'd ever had.
  Davan: That last statement alone pushes the story from sad to heartbreakingly tragic.
  Mike: You're not a bad guy, Davan. You've tried to help me. So maybe you're a little delusional, but not bad.
• When Branwen leaves for her new job, the way Choo-Choo Bear, Aubrey, and PeeJee come together for Davan.
• A Fourth-Wall Mail Slot strip takes an unexpected turn, leaving Choo-Choo Bear with a bit of forgotten childhood in his eye.
• The last strip of Peejee remembering the day Chip took the photo Cab found after he died.
  Peejee: Sit down, shut up, hug me close and let me remember that there are people who really love me. Please.
  Davan: ...Sure, Peejee. Anything you want. Anything at all.
• Monette had been sweating bullets all day worrying about how she'd explain to Fred that she'd cut up his irreplacable comics as part of a collage - only for him to compliment how well it turned out.
  Fred: It's okay, I promise. Sometimes, old things need to go away. That way we have room for the new things that come into our lives.
  Monette: (Tearing up) I... just... I-
  Fred: Don't cry. I promise it'll be okay. Tell ya what. Lemme go find my shoes and we'll go get frames for your collages. I know exactly where I wanna hang 'em.
  Monette: O... okay.
  Fred: Okay. I'll be right back. I love ya, hon. Don't forget that.
  Monette: (After Fred leaves the room) I love you, too, daddy.
• After meeting Lisa's little brother, Monette learns that she's in a Transparent Closet with her family, so she calls up Lisa's father to have a nice chat.
• "I Lava You"
• After Davan sat up the night with PeeJee when she had chicken pox.
• The first strip of 2006, and Fred and Faye give Monette the accrued bank account of all the rent she'd paid them over four years so she has better footing in California. Which is quickly scuttled when Fred brags about wanting to have sex in every room in the house once she leaves, starting with her room.
• Oddly enough, following Faye's death.
  Doctor: Sometimes it just doesn't seem fair.
  Fred: ... Miss, I had almost forty years with the most amazin' woman in the world...If life is unfair, it was unfair in my favor.
• When Peejee asks if Davan ever fell in love with a nice girl.
• Dahlia's visits with her dad have her express annoyance over his insistence on packing a work lunch for her, which initially looks like Amazingly Embarrassing Parents.
  Dahlia's Diary: It's embarrassing. Do you know what they call a woman my age who still has her dad around, doting on her, trying to take care of her... making her the same lunch she liked when she was in grade school? ..."Lucky."
• Aubrey and Jason discuss the possibility of getting married, and after deciding they want to, Aubrey is GENUINELY nervous over how Jason's mother will react to the news. Turns out she had no need to worry.
• That time Mike was right.
  Mike: I guess it just surprised me. I was expecting you to make fun of me like you usually do.
  Davan: Haven't you noticed everyone gets made fun of around here by everyone else? It's not just you, Mike. We pick on each other because we like each other. In fact, if we didn't make fun of you it would probably mean we didn't like you.
• Faye waiting outside the gates of heaven for her husband.
• Mike, on the heels of having the gaming shop close down, takes a job as a Burger Fool and shares a quiet moment with his son after his first day.
• The end of Davan's first date with Vanessa.
• Aubrey and Jason meet their future child.
• Erik, the blonde man who'd applied to work at Nerdrotica assuming they'd reject him and he could file a Frivolous Lawsuit, actually turns out to be a really good employee.
  • And a few years later, he's actually training new male hires at the company.
• A Perfect Rock, lampshaded in the text at the bottom of the comic, "Stop trying to give your readers diabetes."
• Gregory's extremely thoughtful gift to Kharisma, though he's honestly confused whether he did that well or that poorly.
• When in one of his VLogs R.K. said that a lot of what happened with Davan's parents are the fears he has about his own parents as they get old, and how he really doesn't feel prepared for when they'll eventually go away. He then goes on to say that his parents have actually set up a work station for him at their house and his dad sometimes watches him make the comic, and compares it to putting the artwork you do when you're a little kid on the refrigerator.
• The naming of Choo-choo's last kitten.
• Davan takes the remaining fun out of a terminal disease.
• Davan and Rory have quite a few — one example being in an Unshelved Book Club.
• Mike's first day of superheroing as The Pythagorean starts off about as well as you'd expect, with offering melted candy to a child with a missing father, getting fooled into stealing a dog, and, ah, this ... but he steadily improves, and and at the end of the day he does some good.
  • The bakery owner actually becomes Mike's boxing instructor so that Mike can defend himself better.
• After the Pythagorean meets the other local superheroes and discovers how highly regarded he is, he tries to explain he doesn't deserve it...
  Pythagorean: Yeah, you guys seem to think I'm respectable or something but just a heads-up. I tend to self-destruct, especially when I'm stressed.
  Factoid: We all have flaws, man.
  Pythagorean: No, see, I really screw up.
  Factoid: Everyone does. No one's perfect. We all fail, sometimes no matter how hard we try. You're human. The best heroes tend to be.
• During a photo-op in which actors were hired to pose as Boston's local capes, the crowd gets upset when a fake Pythagorean is trotted out. The actual heroes quickly step up to defend someone that had screwed them over, and it culminates with Mike showing up in his Pythagorean costume to calm the crowd, quietly compliment the actors, and dress down the politician who'd arranged it all.
  • And again after Davan finds out.
    Mike: ...is this when you say something really snarky that'll deflate my ego?
    Davan: Nope, actually proud of you.
    Mike: Oh. I was looking forward to that... a little let down, really.
    Davan: I win.
• There's something oddly touching about how angry the people get when they see the fake Pythagorean, even though it disturbs Mike.
• Why does Davan go out of his way to help Audrey and PeeJee?
• The ritual Kim comes up with for abducting the bar.
• Jason's Valentine's Day gift to his wife makes her exclaim about how he's her soulmate while devouring a realistic candy recreation of St. Valentine's head.
• Davan's time cooking Thanksgiving Dinner after Faye's passing has him cook ham in her honor.
• Fred falls asleep in his chair, and IRS disproves his pessimistic theory.
• This "Rhymes With Witch", in an odd way.
• Vanessa's proposal.
• Kharisma looking out for a young man and making sure he didn't ruin his future with a stupid mistake. Better yet, she inspired him to spend his life helping other people in need.
• Fred gives a bunch of pub stuff to PeeJee that he'd been gifted from friends during his life. "Friendship only really matters if you give it as willingly as you took it in the first place."
• When Candy called Davan to yell at him about him getting married, Vanessa explained that Candy might be freaking out over it because she was worried about losing a friend ... and Davan made sure that Candy knew she wouldn't be.
• While Vanessa's big brother, Lou, can be a little clingy, he was there for her during critical moments.
• "Try to see myself the way Vanessa does."
• Kharisma realizing that maybe she doesn't have to run, and hoping the people who knew her have moved on with their lives and become happier people.
• After all the horrible things he's done to her, after he's rejected her attempts to be nice a hundred times, when he finally shows he has a heart, Peejee gives Mike a chance to start over.
• Davan, after realizing Scotty had lied to him long ago, goes out to their old (rebuilt) tree fort and finds a teen on the verge of graduation who's Drowning My Sorrows. He eventually has a heart-to-heart with him.
  Davan: Don't let what you might lose blind you to all that you still have.
• Davan taking up the mantle of Rory's father.
  Rory: Thanks, Dad.
• There's something oddly sweet and cute about the fact that Davan and Vanessa got married while wearing Kaiju costumes! (not to mention hilarious). In fact, the entire wedding arc (starting here) has it's fare share of memorable moments.
• Jason and Shirley Koklik actually became fast friends, to the point that Shirley actually babysits and spoils the hell out of his "granddaughter".
• "...Yeah, she's coming home with me."
• Fred and Davan don't usually have many of these, but when they do it's worth it.
• Rory, in the midst of Gayngst, is confronted by his mother about keeping secrets... about having written his biological father. After a long heart-to-heart, it ends with Rory admitting he has more secrets, but isn't sure how to tell--
  Donna: Then don't. Don't tell me until you're ready. And I'll tell you the same thing, that I love you. And I promise, I'll never get tired of saying that to you.
• Randy, after railing against one particularly obsessive fan who actually found his wife at her job to complain about Randy not attending a specific convention, dedicates the next strip to fans who had passed away.
  Randy: It's just something I think about from time to time. But I try to be mindful of it and treat everyone like I'd want to treat them as if it was the last time I'd ever get to see them. Because, eventually, it will be.
• Randy's depression is held at bay because he and his wife are expecting a baby in 2018. The first strip of 2018 is hilarious.
• Davan takes Rory to a local Professional Wrestling show, and gets progressively more irritated with the goings-on... until he glances over at Rory's obvious excitement.
• The end of Year Seventeen arc, when Rory comes out as pansexual to his friend Philip and him accepting it, ending with frank discussions about other people's reactions, both accepting and not, to that from both him and Davan. Mundane? Yes. But heartwarming in that it's a realistic response from people who deeply care for Rory.
• Pamjee's views on what counts as being "successful".
  Pamjee: I thought we could listen to the work of the second most successful person in your family.
  Jason: Second most?
  Pamjee: Being a big star is nice but he didn't get to adopt me. [sic]
• When the fast-food restaurant Mike works at is closed down because of an arsonist attacking it, his boss, Eric, adds two months of wages to his last paycheck as thanks for a decade of service, and tells Mike that if he opens another restaurant down the road, Eric would hire him if he didn't find another job by then.
  • Mike is more sad than touched at the gesture — largely because Eric was a good person and didn't deserve that kind of kick in the teeth — but that's heartwarming too, because it shows how far he's come.
• The final strip of 2019, which walks the balance between this and Tearjerker.
• Randy made a comic sharing his struggle with depression, but ended on the note that he has the best bedside attendants he could hope for.
  • Later, in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, Randy posted a follow-up asking readers to take good care of themselves.
    And remember. Your Uncle Randy loves you. ...he's a dickhead, but he still loves you.
  • As Davan, like his writer, also suffers from Depression, this strip is rather heartwarming.
• After Joel Schumacher passed away, Randy did a comic honoring him with a Take That! at the Batman fans who hate him.
• Responding to a reader who complained about the Lighter and Softer tone of the comic in 2020, Randy clearly explained why in four panels.
  The Rant: Self-care fucking matters.
• For Halloween 2020, Davan's dad Fred waits at the door in his wheelchair hoping that in spite of the pandemic they would still get a couple of kids trick-or-treating because dammit that's what Halloween is for. The next morning, Davan wakes up to find his dad still at the door... dead in his wheelchair. Naturally, this is a Tear Jerker, but as the ambulance transporting Fred's body to the morgue pulls away, a neighbor child approaches Davan to give him her condolences. She also lets him know she had stopped at the house to trick-or-treat the previous night, and Fred spent the time to separate for her the fruit candies that she preferred.
  Little girl: I won't ever forget that. I hope you won't, either.^note I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING
• After Monette flies in to attend Fred's funeral, she tells Davan that "your dad died" - he immediately corrects her.
  Davan: Our dad. Your place in the family isn't dependent on my parents being alive. You know you're still family, right?
  Monette: Yeah... yeah, I do. (Tearing up) But it's still nice to hear it out loud.
  The Rant: We all need reassurance now and again.
  • A few strips later, we find out that Fred put Monette and PeeJee in his will.
• Despite the COVID Pandemic and despite Katy, Texas and Bedford, Texas being four hours apart from each other, Gris shows up in person at Fred's funeral so they can give Rory their support amidst his grief over his grandfather-figure's death.
• While Davan and Monnette are cleaning out Fred's workshop, they find a plastic piece that Davan instantly recognizes. Davan explains to Monette that when he was little, he got a Snoopy toy and got upset when it couldn't sleep on top of the toy doghouse that came with it like in the comics. Fred fixed the problem by making a small plastic platform that would fit on top of the doghouse so Davan could get what he wanted out of the toy. Davan realizes that, without the toy set, there's no reason to keep it - but immediately puts it in the "Keep" pile anyway. According to Randy in The Rant, his own dad actually did this for him.
• The "Bath Meats" strip.
  Randy: I've never gone from angry to confused faster in my life, but you better believe I ate that bath salami.
• While not exactly conventionally heartwarming, Aubrey really does consider her employees' wants. Specifically, which one would best be suited to play a mermaid drowning men.
  I just hope, someday, I find a special someone who gets me as well as you do.