The Lance Conspiracy

          It is time for us to see the light! Lance Redcloud is not just the self-centered playboy he appears to be at first glance. Well, sure, he's that. But there's so much he's hiding of his past...

          Have you ever wondered where Lance came from, and how he ended up in his current state of mooching off Eskimo? He is not the sweet orphan boy you thought he was. You see, he had to get away from his parents as soon as he could. He had to get out of his home town. Because it was the citizens of that town that knew his secret...

          Have you ever wondered why Lance, despite his claims to have a great body, never takes off his shirt, even to sleep? (He sleeps in that black muscle shirty-thing.) Have you ever wondered why he charms a lot of girls, and makes out with them, but never goes any further than that? Have you ever wondered how he can get up in the morning and go right to the fridge without shaving, and still not have any facial hair?

          That's right, folks. You guessed it. The truth is, Lance is (at least physically) a girl.

          Sure, Lancethinks of himself as a boy. And he does a good job hiding his unmanly physiology. As luck would have it, he's naturally tall, and he gets his slender, somewhat muscular body from the 600 push-ups he prides himself on doing each day. He does his best to hide obviously feminine features (an Ace bandage and a leather jacket can do magic) and, hey, no one ever blamed a girl for stuffing a pair of socks in her pants every day to fool millions into believing she was born a guy--right?

          But there is another thing that separates men from women in the cartoon world--the world that Lance and all his forest friends inhabit. For in the cartoon world, all women naturally have dark eyelashes and all men don't. What is Lance to do to hide his lush cartoon eyelashes?

          Why-- wear sunglasses of course.

          So there you have it, folks. Lance may be a boy, but he possesses the body of a girl. Lance and Eskimo is secretly a really cool comic book dealing with transgender issues! So I think we all need to give the cartoonist a round of applause for being so much cooler than we thought he--or she--was.

Q: But in the Valentine's Day Special, in the "More Than a Woman" montage, Lance and Eskimo are shown at the beach and Lance has his shirt off and he's a man.

           The montage is in Lance's memory (or perhaps his imaginings for the future). Perhaps Lance is so used to thinking of himself as a man that he forgets that he can't take his shirt off at the beach. This is something that might only occur to him when he's actually at the beach and in that situation. Also, many of the things in the montage probably never happened: the Lady and the Tramp bit and the King and I bit probably came from Lance's imagination (and I have my doubts about the roulette bit and the ninja bit as well), so why not the bit about  going to the beach and having the freedom to show off his chest?

Q: But if Lance is a really girl, how come Eskimo still won't go out with him?

       The cartoonist tried to throw us off the scent with The Lance and Eskimo Valentine's Day Special, when Eskimo refused Lance because he was a boy and, therefore, not in fitting with her sexual preference. We can assume that Eskimo does know about Lance's biological sex. She is his best friend and they do live together--it would be a hard thing to hide. Especially since it seems that the two have known each other for a long time. So why would Eskimo turn down Lance, knowing that he is (kind of) a girl?

          I know why.

          To love someone, you must love them on all levels, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, yada yada yada. Assuming that Eskimo has to potential to love Lance emotionally and spirtually (because those levels are kind of vague anyway) and assuming that she could be physically attracted to him from what she knows of his (*cough* female) body, she still has to love him mentally. But Lance doesn't have a girl's mentality. He thinks of himself as a boy, and acts accordingly. In order to love Lance both mentally and physically, Eskimo would have to be bisexual which, as she clearly states with the statement "You know I'm gay, right?", she is not.

Q: So Lance and Eskimo will still never get together?

         Who knows what goes on in that crazy cartoonist's head? I suppose there's more of a chance than before, when we thought Lance was just some dude. You never know.

Q: Why does it matter, if Lance acts like a boy anyway?

         Well, it doesn't, really. I just thought you should know.