Yeah. Um.

Obviously, it wasn’t enough to simply have a Palindrome Song of the Mutant Gerbils, with notes. We had to have an eight-page literary analysis of the Palindrome Song as well. Ed Wells is a family friend who’s been very supportive of Narbonic. He often sends me newspaper and magazine clippings on subjects related to mad science, comics, and/or kittens boiled in oil. He and Julie briefly struck up a correspondence based on this essay.

“Andie W. Swell” is actually an anagram of “Edwin A. Wells,” Ed’s full name. I have an ongoing fascination with singer Yma Sumac, a fascination that carries over into my music-themed comic Smithson.

This strip may have inspired the concept of gerbils as left-wing political agitators, later to feature hugely in Narbonic. Or I may have started writing Artie that way already. I can’t remember.

I still like the little portraits I drew of everyone, including myself as the Big Capitalist.

I’m extremely fond of Terribly Stern Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” another piece of poetry I will happily recite until forced to stop.