Chapter: Pilot

Thank goodness we don’t still have to punch cards with our hole punch every time we want to save a Word document.

Last time I made reference to “Dame David Bowie” was about 15 years ago and someone got really upset, like, properly upset. But when I was a youth, Bowie was always referred to as “The Dame”, which means I must have got it from Smash Hits magazine, an unimpeachable source. Obviously I love the music of David Bowie. I can point out gems where you might imagine no gems were to be found, eg the 1992 soundtrack to Ralph Bakshi’s “Cool World”.

Who was the (live action) star of Cool World? A very young Brad Pitt. I remembered it being Alec Baldwin. IIRC Pitt plays a cartoonist who clearly has a bigger suit budget than any other cartoonist I have met (excepting perhaps Seth).

UPDATE: Apparently Gabriel Byrne is the cartoonist and Young Brad Pitt is a detective. That makes sense. We all remember Gabriel Byrne from his runs on X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Alpha Flight. And The Usual Suspects.

As an adult. I’ve never seen the same doctor twice. This speaks to infrequent attendance, but also lends a certain hesitancy to presenting symptoms, as it is always a “first date” and as an inveterate people-pleaser, the last thing I am going to do is tell a perfect stranger just how unwell I am.

I think I wrote at length about Shelley’s relationship with Bruno a few weeks ago. But it’s a long road from here to there.

I took up driving late (I was 26 when I passed my test) and have spent my whole driving life in the world of satnav and GPS. And thank goodness because without it, having no sense of direction whatsoever, I would never arrive. My dear father likes to describe auto routes to me as if can picture one thing he is talking about. I can’t.

As a pedestrian, I am okay with a paper map. In some ways I prefer it. If I get lost, I can tear a page out and chew it to aid concentration.

Thank goodness I designed all these characters several years ago and didn’t get to use them. Dodged a bullet there. Thanks, pandemic John. You did it again.

That worked out better than anyone could possibly have expected.

Jack and Erin Winters have a long history. She supervised him through a work experience week fraught with danger.

Jack’s pushing himself hard in today’s page. People only usually push themselves this hard in manga. It doesn’t happen in western comics. Or indeed Western comics. Apart from the one below, from which I transcribed this entire page verbatim.

(The part of Shelley was originally written for George Montgomery)

For a long time, you could buy own-brand fashion t-shirts with the number 76 on them from high street chains in the UK. Many different styles. Now, I was born in 1976, so I noticed this perhaps more than I otherwise might. I know it’s the year of the US Bicentennial, which may have introduced it into design vocabulary in a way that wasn’t clearly defined. But I could never quite put my finger on it. I still occasionally see a generic 76 and wonder what’s going on.

Now those are some cock-a-doodle utterances, aren’t they?