Eustace Boyce, shortly after becoming a man in a caravan in Wales [1]
Eustace Alan Boyce [2] , possibly Eustace David Boyce [3] is a major character of Scary Go Round, who also features prominently in the Bobbins relaunch. For a long time, he was only known to readers by his nickname "The Boy". While one may assume that this derives from his surname, it actually is the translation of what the French exchange student Elodie Broussard called him when they first met: "Le Garçon".[4] Neil Haversham often called him "Boycey" [5], and Elodie started to call him "Useless", after he told her to stop calling him Le Garçon.[6]
When he first appeared in the comic, he was a pupil of Griswald's Grammar School, the class mate of Esther DeGroot and Erin Winters, and an occasional assistant of inventor Tim Jones.[7] He also had a crush on Amy Chilton.[8] He lost his virginity to Esther during an eventful road trip in a caravan in Wales.[9] They went steady after that (with a short interruption due to Esther having an hypnosis-induced infatuation with Bob Crowley [10]) until they broke up eleven days after the start of university, due to Esther cheating on him. Afterward, he paired up with Sarah Grote, though this apparently didn't last.
He did his PhD (in lasers) at the University of Tackleford, in the same department Neil Haversham was working.[11] There, he also met Neil's daughter Mildred. It is unclear if Eustace ever suspected the fact that the underage girl had developed a crush on him [12], but that, along with a general lack of interpersonal skills, would explain why he was always showing so much uneasiness whenever she was around.[13] (This crush represents a sort of full-circle of Eustace's character arc; he started out crushing on Amy, who was older than him, and ended up being crushed on by Mildred, who is younger.)
During these days, he also met Erin Winters again.[14] After one date though, their relationship didn't evolve much further, due to Eustace's appalling lack of initiative in that matter.[15] Nevertheless, it turned out that Erin did indeed fall in love with him, so much even that she saved his life by bargaining with the Grim Reaper and trading in his soul for her own.[16] This meant however, that Erin had to return to the Underworld and continue her life as Mordawwa. Sad about this, Eustace built an eldritch computer, in order to at least be able to communicate with her - which then promptly killed him.[17] In the Afterlife, he was reunited with Erin at last, now serving her as the ghostly horse Scientist.[18]
At some subsequent point, Erin and Eustace were ejected from Hell by as-yet undisclosed causes, and returned to mortal human status (with Eustace no longer being a horse, though he was wearing a horse costume that was removable); at first they landed in Svalbard [19], but (with the assistance of Santa Claus, who was at first reluctant to help as the two turned up on his "naughty" list; this status reversed when he checked twice, though) eventually returned to Tackleford.