There Will Be One Last Perfect Day
On May 17, 2020 two Texan stormchasers deal with the fallout of the COVID-19 Pandemic in their personal lives while loading up to get some footage of a series of storms rolling in.Shot and Chaser
is a webcomic by E.K. Weaver, the author of The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal, which first started uploading in 2022 and updates with two new pages a week. It is mirrored on Webtoon with a two week delay.
Tropes that appear in this webcomic:
- Forced from Their Home: The letter Olly is hiding from Tre is from Olly's landlord, and says that he's missing the last two months of rent and will have to evict Olly if he doesn't start paying. Olly can't due to his injuries, being fired and the pandemic reducing employment opportunities even further. The stress of this eviction Olly can't fight is one of the things he's trying to avoid for a day by chasing the storm.
- The Fundamentalist: Tre is estranged from his mother because of her Christian fundamentalist views and the restrictive controlling way she ran the household growing up, even banning music that was secular in any way or not Christian enough for her from being listened to by anyone in her family, including her husband. The only recordings that she approved of were of sermons.
- Horrible Housing: Olly's housing may not be horrible per-say but it isn't ideal, showing wear and tear, outright damage and the small bare-bones place is also a mess because Olly is struggling with depression and the recent loss of the use of one arm.
- I Call It "Vera": Olly's Oldsmobile is named Doo Doo Brown.
- Invincible Classic Car: While loading up into Olly's hail dented 1990 Oldsmobile he jokes that the cruiser will last longer than he will.
- Lame Pun Reaction: When Tre is photographing a client he tells her a knock knock joke that she gives a thumbs down, before telling her a pun that gets her laughing out loud and saying she needs to share it with her niece. When Tre says it's a shame he can't take credit for it she comes back with, "or the blame".
- Mess of Woe: Tre notes that Olly's house was getting to be such a mess that he was becoming quite worried about him in the wake of Olly losing his job and being badly injured. Olly's place is still not perfect, but he's been working on cleaning up what he can with only one functional arm after two months of falling into depression and trying to fight for his workers comp.
- Out of Job, into the Plot: Olly is dealing with the fallout of being fired in COVID cutbacks after being injured on the job and refused any workers comp because his former place of employment says helping unload product was outside the purview of his job and the parking lot doesn't count as company property. He's essentially badly injured and unable to work because he was being a dedicated employee and in response they've refused to pay him and fired him in addition to giving him unnecessary legal fees trying to fight for his worker's comp. He's also got hospital bills to worry about.
- Person as Verb: Olly says "Wow, you just straight up Grandpa Simpsoned out of there." when Tre steps into a convenience store, then turns around and walks back out after seeing no one inside is wearing masks.
- The Plague: The comic takes place during the COVID-19 Pandemic, with Olly and Tre taking precautions to try to avoid getting it. They are also annoyed by fellow Texans who deny the pandemic's severity and refuse to take even the simple precaution of wearing a mask, with Tre leaving a store rather than potentially exposing himself when he sees the other patrons. Tre gets a call letting him know his biological mother is sick with COVID in the ICU and not expected to survive.
- Shout-Out:
- Olly compares Tre to Grandpa Simpson for walking in the door, and then immediately turning around and leaving an establishment once he sees what's inside.
- The first chapter is titled Digging to Hell from the lyrics from the Super Furry Animals song "Liberty Belle" from the album Phantom Power.
- Tre is delighted to discover a Luther Vandross tape in his dad's collection, as its release date means his dad bought and hid it from Tre's mother after Tre's mother had abolished all secular entertainment for the family making it "contraband".
- Other tapes from Tre's dad's collection brought on the storm chasing trip include some Detroit Spinners and Stevie Wonder, along with a number of sermons Tre and Olly are much less enthused about.
- Tagline: "There Will Be One Last Perfect Day". Variations of this show up every time the conversation moves towards Olly's personal life, as he changes the subject while saying it's going to be a good day for once as his life falls to pieces around him.
