Roger
 | This page is pretty raw LLM output. |
| Roger | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Gender | Male |
| Species | Cat |
| Occupation | Student |
| Affiliation | Roger’s gang |
| Debut | Bonding, page 3 March 3, 2007 |
Roger is a former student of Roseville High School and Tess’s boyfriend during the year she spent bullying freshmen alongside him. A grade above her, he is remembered far more than he is seen, turning up almost entirely in other people’s flashbacks and never saying a word in the main comic.
Personality
Roger treats younger students as targets. He picks on freshmen for fun, hangs around with Craig, and has a pocket knife whose hiding place Craig knows.[1][2]
Augustus sums him up for Daisy in Bonding: he “made a game of terrorizing freshmen”, with taunting, stealing and bullying all part of the sport, and plenty of sophomores were glad to be rid of him.[1] Tess later boasts that Roger “Roughs up anyone who looks at me wrong”, while Craig warns Jessica to be careful around “guys like Roger and me”.[3][4]
Appearance
Roger is a white cat with a green mohawk, piercings and tattoos, usually wearing a sleeveless black jacket.[5] In Augustus’s memories of Bonding he and Tess are drawn as a matched pair, his black jacket and piercings set against her spiky choker and black tank top.[1]
Significant events
Roger first appears in Bonding, and only inside Augustus’s recollection. Telling Daisy about Tess’s past, Augustus explains that her old friends only cared about being close to Roger’s girlfriend, and his memory pictures show a smug Roger walking away from a crying boy while a frightened girl rushes over.[1] By then the two are already over.[6] That leaves Tess to take the heat for both of them. Rachel slaps her in Follow Me over what she and Roger did to her brother, and in Under Pressure Tess tells Abbey that with Roger out of the picture, everyone is taking their anger out on her.[7][8]
His one present-day appearance comes in Moving On, on the last day of school, chatting up a girl with a graduation tassel while Tess looks on from around a corner.[9] Everything after that is somebody else looking back. Pillow Talk shows him in Jessica’s freshman year, glaring her out of the hallway and kicking Aaron after Aaron’s kickball hits Tess.[5][10] An official BCB Tumblr response later confirmed that Roger, not Tess, was the one who broke Aaron’s arm.[11]
The side story Blind Date is the only place Roger speaks. Veronica has explicitly used it to establish the same freshman-year continuity, and Roger’s contribution is to laugh that Matt is “what a beast” after the boy bumps into Tess.[12][13]
Major relationships
Tess
Tess describes Roger as someone she can direct at other people: he “Roughs up anyone who looks at me wrong”.[3] The official BCB Tumblr later said that reading him as Tess’s “hired muscle” is reasonable, while judging Tess the worse of the pair.[11] By the time Tess is a junior their relationship is over, and in Moving On she seeks him out one last time, watches him flirt with somebody else, and thinks “Goodbye, Roger” before walking away smiling.[9] Years on, in Total Recall, she still wonders whether things might have been different without him, without letting herself off the hook.[14]
Minor relationships
Craig is one of Roger’s friends, and the two laugh in the hallway together in Pillow Talk. Craig refuses to rat him out, but he is happy enough to threaten Jessica with him.[5][4] For Aaron, Rachel and Jessica, Roger is only ever a bully or a threat.
Quotes
Roger never speaks in the main comic. His only lines come in the side story Blind Date, where he jeers at Matt after Matt bumps into Tess.
Trivia
- When fans wondered whether Alejandro or Toby might be Tess’s ex, Veronica pointed out that Roger has green hair.[15]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 34: Bonding, page 3
- ↑ Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 28
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 35
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 31
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 23
- ↑ Chapter 34: Bonding, page 4
- ↑ Chapter 32: Follow Me, page 7
- ↑ Chapter 35: Under Pressure, page 10
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 40: Moving On, page 5
- ↑ Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 29
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr. 2024-09-09.
- ↑ Veronica (2026-04-13). “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr.
- ↑ Blind Date, page 2 🔒 (members only)
- ↑ Chapter 85: Total Recall, page 39
- ↑ Veronica (2017-05-20). “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr.