Jess Kautz was a fellow Vassar student who ended up sending me a lot of Narbonic artwork. I met him and his mother once when they were in town for robot wrestling; they were very nice and drove me to Berkeley even though I kind of got the feeling they didn’t really want to go.

I really like the crude, woeful renditions of Helen and Dave in George Carroll’s strip.

I swear “All Your Base” jokes were still timely when this strip was written. Lame, of course, but timely.

One of the stickers on Mell’s suitcase reads “Garzapolis,” which is a private joke too complex to go into here. Andrew and I knew a guy named Garza, that’s all I can say.

I can’t blame the characters for wanting to get rid of me. I can’t even draw their heads proportional to their bodies.

Mell is wearing black version of her dress from “North of Space” with a rosary as a necklace. Judging from her surname, Kelly, Mell probably comes from an Irish Catholic background, but not a very devout one. Her dad’s, like, a hippie.