Quickie

There's always time for a quickie.

I’m currently on a very brief vacation. It’s not a vacation so much as a four day weekend, but it’s a vacation to me. Hey, it’s better than a prolonged bathroom break, which is the mini-vacation of those of us who tend to work too much.

My four day weekend happens to coincide with this nation’s 250th anniversary and a horrible heatwave that is gripping large chunks of the planet. That means I really can’t go outside. I have skin that doesn't tan so much as catch on fire. Once I heal from the burns I go back to being Casper the friendly ghost. I’ve learned to accept that. When I dash outside I’ll just carry a fire extinguisher.

But at least I have air conditioning. If this heat wave has done anything it’s educated many of us about millions of people who have to roast indoors. That’s horrifying. I spent the first nine years of my life without air conditioning and I also spent summers helping my grandfather harvest cantaloupe and watermelons in scorching Mississippi heat. I would say that I don’t know how I did it, but enough time has passed that I think it’s safe to reveal my secret.

I had superpowers back then. Yes, I was Child Man. I had the brain of an adult with the super regenerative powers of a child. I hauled watermelons out of ant infested soil until I was soaked with sweat because I knew, at the end of the day, my reward was enough money to buy comics. Then, by the ol’ swimming hole I would read those comics instead of swimming, which is when I stopped being Child Man and became Odd Ball: The Weird Kid. Because any kid who would rather read than go swimming was obviously weird.

Those are my happy memories of heat without air conditioning.

Since this post is a quckie, I’m going to literally click and point at a comic in my archive, then discuss it sight unseen. What could go wrong?

Ok, I cheated. I just made this comic yesterday. This is obviously about me. There’s Penny accidentally waking up early. This makes me think of Mary Higgins Clark. I haven’t read Mary Higgins Clark books but I have read a lot of Harlan Coben. Harlan has spoken about the hard work success requires and there’s no better example than Mary. Apparently she was widowed at a young age and wanted to be an author. She had five kids to raise as a single parent. In order to be an author she simply got up three hours before her kids got up, worked on her book, then got ready herself and went to work. She did that for years before she made her first sale and it’s people like her that make the rest of us look like lazy dung beetles. It should be noted that she did this long before the invention of the snooze button.

Dang it, I cheated again. I just made this one tonight. Is it any good? Who knows, I have no feedback. Going through the chain of command is never as exhausting as quickly going through the chain of command for the second time, but it happens way too often.

My best friend Jim Randall (please search him on Google so he becomes known) pointed out that Mr. Thompson is either a Time Lord or the C3PO of my comics. He pops up from my earliest scribblings (when I was ten years old) to know, regardless of the setting or characters.

The truth is that I was born into this world with the real life Mr. Thompson and he left this plane of existence right before I decided to start drawing comics. The first rule of creating comics is not “write what you know”. Rather, it’s “bring back the dead”. You are the creator of your own little universe, you might as well have your cat back.

Ok, this really is a random click, because it’s Christmastime and Penny has her little suit on. This is when Penny first became an Assistant Manager. My clever observation at that time was that anyone who became an Assistant Manager was suddenly wearing a suit jacket. They had the same clothes otherwise. I imagined a store called Suddenly Manager that was just filled with suit jackets. That way, you could buy something in a hurry that said you were a cut above everyone else.

Ooh, early Pandemic Tabby. She would show claws and nap like a cat then. I think we should be prepared for honest answers when we ask people how they are. We’re putting the question out there. If they have a bad hip we should be willing to hear about it. If anything, we’ll know why they’re a bit crabby.

This is June 2023 and we’re doing inventory. I remember doing inventory then. I had inherited a store that was missing about 20,000 items. I wish that was an exaggeration. I think I was given a pardon on that because previous managers at that store were no longer with the company and it was their fault, probably because they didn’t know how to count.

This is September of 2024 and Penny is enjoying a life with shorts that I cannot enjoy. This is the upside to having your own little universe. You can make characters that do not catch on fire when exposed to the sun.

This is sometime in 2020. Hey, I like this one. I’ve never had the opportunity to throw myself at the mercy of the court, but I think I would. Courtrooms are pretty intimidating. I think they’re designed that way on purpose. If they wanted everyone to relax while in court they would design them to look like an arcade.

August of 2025. Berle is in purgatory and Ian is leading Penny and Tabby to Berle through some sort of portal in the dark caves beneath their store. You know, a typical slice of retail life.

This is late 2022. Vickie is in the hospital because April Bloom was making out with Winter Sun. Such a happy time. She’s now as skinny as a rail thanks to modern, unaffordable medicine.

I hope this wasn’t too quick for you. It wasn’t too quick for me. I’m getting back to my “vacation” with the full expectation of something way better than a prolonged bathroom break.