Angels: November 7-12, 2005

This strip turned out pretty well, mainly because Iris has such lovely wallpaper.

The smart phone that’s actually smart is another of Dave’s improbably brilliant inventions, although you can probably get an app that does that now. But would it have mysterious alpha and omega buttons? Surely not.

And yes, Helen doodles gene sequences.

The names on the duty roster in the second panel are all characters from Jeffrey Wells’s serial Tales of the Starbuck Avenger. This inspired Jeff to write Caliban into an installment of Starbuck Avenger, which inspired me to write a Starbuck Avenger fanfic with Caliban in it. At this point we were skimming the event horizon of an infinitely recursive loop, so it was clearly time to back off.

Anyway, that’s Trish, the protagonist of Jeff’s series, working the counter in the first panel.

I should have had Caliban’s name badge just read “Cal.” That bugs me now.

My favorite part of this strip is Dave’s line in the second panel. I think people on the message board had been talking for a while about the need to have polarity-reversing in the comic at some point.

Poor Freddy is really the buttmonkey in this storyline.

Aw, what the hell, I love this strip. It’s just people running around screaming. I almost never did strips like this, and yet it’s basically your standard Narbonic plot in a nutshell.

I drew characters in Chuck Taylors a lot. I probably got that off “Bloom County.”

Sometimes you can tell when I wasn’t satisfied with the writing on a strip because I clearly worked extra hard on the art to make up for it. The comedy here is just okay, but I really like the way the art came out, especially Dave in the last panel with his post-dynamite-Wile-E-Coyote face.

19 thoughts on “Angels: November 7-12, 2005

  1. Monday:

    This strip is why Dave is never getting invited back, probably more than any other event in this arc.

  2. You would think the guys at least would grok the essential appropriateness of the rocket launcher, thanks to DOOM

  3. My first thought was, “Where did Helen get explosives?”  Then I realized, “Duh, she’s in a convenience store.  She can make her own out of marshmallow Peeps, toothpaste, kleenex, and generic store-brand diet redpop.”

  4. Actually, Alpha and Omega would be perfectly good symbols for “begin call” and “end call”.  Much better than stupid red/green phone icons (my Dad was color-blind).

  5. (TUNE: “Mame”, Jerry Herman)

    Who fights a deathless demonic horde?
    Mell!
    Who hurls grenades whenever she’s bored?
    Mell!

    She goes from quiet student to
    Monster, indestructable and mean!
    I ask you, is it prudent to
    Give the lady any more caffeine?

    Her sword is just as strong as her pen!
    Mell!
    She’ll kill ’em all, then kill ’em again!
    Mell!

    She’ll fight like a battalion, and
    Send the demons screamin’ back to Hell!
    She’ll live a peaceful life of ease
    When those Infernal Regions freeze!
    The cure is worse than the disease!
    Mell!

  6. No it’s not, Dave! Remember the Valentine’s party? It was Artie then! And then Seth!

     

    Okay, and then it was you.

  7. Thursday:

    I assumed Iris’s line was a roundabout way of saying that between episodes she went in swinging with a cry of “EAT ALUMINUM!” – only to meet a highly ironic disarming.

    Head pokes: 32.

  8. There was a cartoonist named Garrity
    Whom readers revered as a rarity;
    She listened to fans
    And accepted demands
    To have someone reverse the polarity.

    (And if the technological singularity ever comes about, I’ll get to name-drop you in another limerick before we’re all wiped out.)

  9. (TUNE: “She Loves You”, The Beatles)

    Now things are looking grim,
    So Freddy gets a sho-o-ove!
    We’re sacrificing him …
    The poor guy gets no lo-o-ove!
    And so we run now,
    From the things with many eyes!
    We run now,
    To avoid a grim demise!
    YAAAAAAAAUGH!

    We run now!
    YAUGH!  YAUGH!  YAUGH!
    It’s fun now!
    YAUGH!  YAUGH!  YAUGH!
    Yeah, we run and shout,
    With hands up in the air!
    ‘Cause it’s all about
    The microwa-a-a-ave …
    Re-pair!
    YAUGH!  YAUGH!  YAUGH!
    YAUGH!  YAUGH!  YAUGH!
    YAAAAAAAAAAUGH!

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