Mike’s house
| Mike's house | |
|---|---|
 | |
| First appearance | Gaming Rivalry, page 1 May 5, 2006 |
| Related characters | Mike, Lucy, Paulo, Sue, Amaya, Abbey, Stacy, David, Ellen, Mike’s dad, Haley, Chris, Blur, Yashy |
Mike’s house is a two-storey family home in the Roseville neighborhood where Mike lives with his mother Ellen, his father, his sister Haley and his baby brother Chris. His pet bird Blur lived here too, for a while. Mike’s bedroom is the most-revisited private room in the series, and it is where both his friendship with Lucy and his long-distance relationship with Sandy eventually come apart.
Description
The house sits in a row of similar peak-roofed houses, with a driveway out front for the family station wagon.[1] A few front steps lead down to a grassy yard, and there is a children’s playground with a slide and swings a short walk away.[2]
The plain brown front door opens almost directly into the living room, where a dark red couch faces the family television and a staircase with a wooden banister leads upstairs.[3] A china cabinet stands against one living-room wall,[4] and the kitchen with its breakfast table is close by.[1]
Upstairs are Mike’s bedroom, Haley’s room,[5] Chris’s room with its race-car bed,[6] and a shared bathroom.[1] There is also a computer room, a small pink-walled space with a desk and monitor that Mike nominally shares with Haley.[7] Haley considers it hers.[8]
Mike’s bedroom holds a bed beneath the window,[9] a dresser, and a desk with a lamp and the bonsai tree Sandy once left him, complete with tiny figurines of the two of them.[10] An old television and game console sit on an entertainment stand beside a glass cabinet full of games,[11] and guests play sitting on the floor with their backs against the bed.[12] The closet is cluttered with cardboard boxes and roomy enough to hide Paulo in a pinch.[13] Blur slept at the foot of the bed for years.[1]
History
The house appears on the very first page of Gaming Rivalry, where Mike and Lucy squabble over a fighting game while Blur and Yashy heckle from the sidelines.[15] It stays their gaming turf for years, and the bedroom is where Mike does his brooding, whether over Lucy’s surprise kiss[16] or over Sandy’s letters, with Lily on hand to counsel him through the latter.[17] In Hot Pursuit, he bolts out the front door after glimpsing Sandy on TV, then comes home to learn she visited while he was out. Her parting gift, the bonsai tree, goes straight onto his desk.[18]
The friendship with Lucy ends in this room, in December. A study session winds down into one last round of video games, and then a text from Sandy announces her upcoming visit. Mike turns on Lucy and tells her, “I DON’T WANT YOU TO BE MY FRIEND!! ... I hate you.”[19] Left alone in his room, Lucy vomits into his trash can and walks out.[20] The comic later reveals that before she left, she used Mike’s phone to text Sandy that he would be better off without her.[21]
After Lucy leaves Roseville, Mike comes home in Leaving Home to an open window and loose blue feathers on the bed. Blur is gone too, and his parting words make the reason plain: “Maybe you can deal without them, BUT I CAN’T!!”[22] Paulo inherits the guest spot from there. He runs up a two-hundred-and-forty-five-dollar bill on Mike’s phone in Buddy System,[12] gets tutored in Mike’s room in Boy Toy,[23] and spends an entire SwordsVale guild meeting hiding in Mike’s closet in Behind Closed Doors, where he hears exactly what the group thinks of him.[24]
For most of the comic, Sandy is present in this house only as a voice. Mike on the phone at night turns up over and over: the corded telephone in the hallway,[25] nightmare-fueled redialing in bed,[26] unanswered “I miss you” texts sent from his desk,[27] homework done over speakerphone.[28] The book-exclusive story No Service is four pages of exactly this.[29]
Sandy sets foot in the house just once, in Model Girlfriend. The whole family beams at her from the couch, Mike hurls his game cartridge away in embarrassment when she sniffs at his hobby, and the two share a kiss in his bedroom right before Haley bursts in.[10][30]
In Eternal Flame, Sandy confesses at that same desk that she has fallen for Francis. Mike screams that it isn’t fair to him,[31] then trashes the room and runs out past a frightened Haley.[32] In the BCI story On Call, set later that night, Sandy calls back to the wrecked bedroom, terrified that Mike had done “something really bad”. He assures her he had only gone out to clear his head.[33]
The two patch things up, and Mike settles into a routine of late-night calls and lost sleep in his bedroom, enough that Ellen turns up at his door to point out what a mess he has been lately.[34] By the time Mike’s parents host a New Year’s party downstairs in New Year’s Resolution, the consoles have gone into a box. Mike hands the whole collection over to Paulo, admitting that the games “just remind me of.. sad things”,[35] and later that evening he and Paulo use the computer room to search Facebook, sending Paulo’s night sideways.[36]
Residents
The comic follows Mike far more closely than the rest of the household.
- Mike is the resident the comic follows, from fighting-game afternoons with Lucy[15] to late nights on the phone with Sandy.[28]
- Ellen is Mike’s mother, the one who does the hosting and the scolding.[12] She is noticeably softer on Mike than on Haley, calling him her “diamond” during one overheard phone fight.[38]
- Haley is Mike’s sister, teasing gatekeeper of his social life[39] and self-appointed owner of the computer room.[8] For all the teasing, her fright during the room-trashing in Eternal Flame was real. Veronica has confirmed as much: “Haley does love Mike at the end of the day!”[40]
- Chris is the baby of the family, owner of the race-car bed and the whole reason Adult Supervision happens.[6]
- Mike’s dad is a near-silent background presence.[10]
- Blur is Mike’s pet bird, a resident until he flies off through the bedroom window in Leaving Home.[3]
Trivia
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 51: Unrequited, page 1
- ↑ Chapter 21: Enter High School, page 1
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 76: Leaving Home, page 8
- ↑ Chapter 124: Second String, page 17
- ↑ Chapter 68: December, page 35
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Adult Supervision, page 9
- ↑ Chapter 82: Local Area, page 10
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 120.1: [Unknown Title, page 6]
- ↑ Love Note, page 1
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 36
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 68: December, page 15
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Chapter 72: Buddy System, page 1
- ↑ Chapter 120.1: [Unknown Title, page 10]
- ↑ Chapter 51: Unrequited, page 1
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 2: Gaming Rivalry, page 1
- ↑ Chapter 15: Aftermath, page 1
- ↑ Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 10
- ↑ Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 12
- ↑ Chapter 68: December, page 23
- ↑ Chapter 68: December, page 33
- ↑ Chapter 71: Just Beautiful, page 17
- ↑ Chapter 76: Leaving Home, page 10
- ↑ Chapter 87: Boy Toy, page 26
- ↑ Chapter 120.1: [Unknown Title, page 26]
- ↑ Chapter 41: Invitation, page 4
- ↑ Chapter 91: Dial Tone, page 17
- ↑ Cut Short, page 1
- ↑ 28.0 28.1 Chapter 129: Tickets Please, page 1
- ↑ Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Four, “No Service”, page 1
- ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 42
- ↑ Chapter 110: Eternal Flame, page 30
- ↑ Chapter 110: Eternal Flame, page 32
- ↑ On Call, page 3 🔒 (members only)
- ↑ Chapter 129: Tickets Please, page 4
- ↑ 35.0 35.1 Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 6
- ↑ Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 8
- ↑ Chapter 76: Leaving Home, page 8
- ↑ Chapter 124: Second String, page 19
- ↑ Chapter 120.1: [Unknown Title, page 3]
- ↑ “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr”. 2026-04-07.