All You Need Is Love

And Comics

I’ve been listening to The Beatles lately, as required every so often by my brain, and it made me want to go back to 1964 and watch them appear on Ed Sullivan. Note that I didn’t want to actually be in the theater, god no, not with all of that screaming. I just want to go back, watch Ed Sullivan, buy some comic books off the rack and keep them in mint condition, and enjoy a simpler time.

Remember those good ol’ days? It was a time of fishin’ holes, grandma’s cornbread, a recently assassinated president, a growing war, and civil unrest. Remember?

I don’t. I wasn’t alive. Perhaps it was both horrible and great, but they definitely enjoyed some of the best comics ever made.

I was thinking about all of this because my era is being romanticized by people younger than me on the internet. They think it was simply spectacular growing up in the 1980s. What a great time we all had, right? I want them to go ahead and keep on romanticizing because I remember it sucking, but at least the comics were still great.

And what about now? Will this era get romanticized by later generations who wish they were growing up now? Honestly, I don’t see how that could be conceivably possible, but you never know. People tend to romanticize the past.

I’m trying my best to help make the comics still be ok.

I used to be Penny, but I’m really trying to be like Tabby. If you pick your job correctly, you can comfortably watch managers come and go.

Many thought that the boss was making a Freudian slip, but he honestly is not that good with staff names. Also, nobody can relax in a breakroom when there are managers in there.

The downside of management in a retail setting isn’t dealing with customers, it’s dealing with the people directly above and below you. Middle management is like being a middle child, which makes me want to watch Malcom In The Middle.

For whatever reason I decided do write the names of female cartoonists who influenced me on the totes, the biggest one being Cathy Guisewite. I was happy that I didn’t have to use Google until I got towards the end. I was having trouble remembering Marcellite Garner’s name, but she worked for Disney and ultimately voiced Minnie and helped shape her personality. Isn’t Marcellite a great name, though? Mae Questel wasn’t a cartoonist, but she was Betty Boop and Olive Oyl and that’s good enough.

Whenever there’s someone cleaning in the back of the deli or bakery, there’s inevitably a customer who spots them and hopes for help. That’s why the employee has their head down and is looking very intently at anything but the shoppers.

This is a goofy Rusty joke. I’m always hesitant to write goofy jokes for Rusty to tell, but that’s the character. He’s fun and I need to let him be himself.

I was hesitant to write this joke, too. I don’t really like jokes about somebody’s physical characteristics, but the first person I based Tabby on was short and she made fun of her height all of the time. Plus, I really liked drawing her hair peeking over the counter.

I liked that the customer didn’t bat an eye and went on describing what he needed to a bit of hair. Customers do that. I once saw a customer ignore a cashier’s nosebleed and continue to describe his problem, and it wasn’t a small nosebleed.

Some people didn’t get this joke, but the people who liked it the most either worked for HR or had to deal with HR quite often. “Reasonable Accommodation” is an important phrase here. If you require something extra to perform your job and it doesn’t affect the nature of your job, the company has to comply. That’s reasonable accommodation. It could be a scenario where an employee is normally required to stand and you have an employee in a wheelchair. Or it could be hundreds of other scenarios. Many companies can be unreasonable and that’s why we have a law.

I liked drawing the characters in the backgrounds of this little series. Background characters are underrated.