Mark and Jenny Running Commentary by Julie Bihn
1/7/2000-12/29/2002
Written 3/8/02-3/23/02
1/7/00: Comparison Model page 8
Julie's sweatdrop count: 8 (although one might just be a miscoloration...)
Panel 1. You ever meet one of those girls who can have any guy they wanted and use them all?
Yeah, me neither. But they're on TV all the time.
Panel 2. I sure hope this restaurant doesn't exist. I just tacked a respective "Mr." or "Ms." after the word "Sushi"...
Panel 5. I doubt Carson'd admit that he thought a job was too dangerous, unless he claimed that he was just afraid that he'd make Maria (or whatever girl) sad if something were to happen to him...
Panel 6. They wind up in a random deserted '50s diner, apparently.
Panel 9. Wow; Mark's maybe not so dumb after all...
Panel 10. I think Maria's tired of the incest jokes too.
Random link of the week. I'm not sure where that gentleman got off to, but he's the one you can think for Mark's happiness, me not having the heart to follow to the logical conclusion of this arc, etc.
1/14/00: Comparison Model page 9
Julie's sweatdrop count: 5
19 panels. Not my most, but close. (Record is 24.)
Panel 1. Ah, yes, my default house design. Poor Maria actually has to live in it. Could be drawn by any elementary school student. Except they'd probably have a chimney with smoke coming out of it. ^_-
Panel 5. Seriously, wouldn't it be weird to wake up to someone cutting your hair?
Panel 7. Carson's hair's shorter here. Why some moron would grow his hair long to work on a fishing boat is beyond me. He actually wore a hair net, though.
Panel 10. It's a blush; Maria hasn't suddenly turned into a girl in "Mair the Defender." ^_-
Panel 11. Did you ever see that portrait of Conan O'Brien made from toenail clippings that they put on the show? I don't think it was real, but it was still disturbing. Toenails are so much worse than fingernails, somehow...
Panel 12. Oh, what do you know; he did have a little ponytail.
Panel 15. Maria keeps her hair short because she thinks it looks better than it does long, not for sentimental reasons. Carson's crying.
Panel 18. I'm not sure where that photo came from; probably a costume party.
Panel 19. I had to throw some humor at the end; it's what I do. Or used to. ^_-
Thoughts of the week. I held out with my computer for another 5 months. Unfortunately, the new scanner I got for my new computer (USB, you know) wasn't as good as the old one...well, that's a story for another day.
Forgot a parenthesis in the old HTML; I fixed it now.
1/21/00: Comparison Model page 10
Julie's sweatdrop count: 7
Panel 1. It's always amused me, the fine line between a good boyfriend and a stalker. If you drop a vague hint that you want something and your boyfriend/husband doesn't pick up on it, then he did a bad job. But if a stalker buys you something you want (or even knows what you want), it's weird.
Panel 2. Frizzyland was my parody-name for a certain park in Anaheim. (I don't recall; it's possible that my best friend in high school came up with it with me in high school or late elementary school. I don't remember! ^^;) I drew this comic in 11th? grade art class about the park. (The character is Looney Bin...)
Panel 4. I would hope that Maria's parents aren't the lowest of the low, the type that would take in a foster kid and spend the government's allowance for the child on themselves and be mean to the child. But it's possible...
Panel 7. Few things are more boring (for me) than listening to people talk when there's no way in the world you'll ever understand what they're talking about.
Panel 8. Mark probably should've said that we'd (he and Maria) better get going, to drag her out of there. But I guess he can't say 'no' to Maria.
Panel 10. Sparkle might have been a more appropriate sound effect. Or maybe not.
Carson's eyes are shining like stars. More often used in Anime than US cartoons (I think).
Panel 14. Of course I never thought of Pokémon as a children's card game (I never even liked the card game!). But at the time, that's what most adults thought it was.
I got some of my friends into Pokémon, actually.....
Thoughts of the week. Man, I was obsessive about feedback back then.
Well, OK, I still kind of am. I didn't update "Mark and Jenny" for like a month until an offline friend asked me what was up with it. Now I'm back on track. But...for how long?
And I still want to make a webpage devoted to Howie on NewsRadio. Poor lonely guy...-_- (sad Anime face) They had the one episode where everyone's hallucinating (Bill's daydreaming about kissing Beth and Lisa, Lisa's daydreaming about outarguing Dave, etc.) and the guy with the snack cart, Howie, comes by and delivers the staff's favorite treats. They ask him about his wife, laugh at his jokes, etc. But that's a daydream, of course; when he comes to his senses and really asks the staff if they want anything, no one does, and they kind of patronize him and hint at him to leave. Poor lonely guy! ;_; ;_; ;_; (crying Anime face)
This series was a M.O.M. entry, as I explain later on, which is why I actually put up 4 whole pages in one week. They were meant to be fairly self-contained, but I don't think that worked.
Panel 2. Might have been more effective if Carson's hand had looked more like a hand, or if it had touched Maria's shoulder.
Panel 4. I love Mark's imagination. I don't know how much comes across, though. Bad guy waves gun at Carson and Mark. Bad guy shoots. Carson lies on ground, bloody, while Mark kicks bad guy. Maria and Mark live happily ever after.
Mark is delusional.
Panels 5-6. Of course, Mark's line is only a pun if you saw his thoughts...
Panel 8. Actually, the whole reason Mark had to get up early is because it's Wednesday. But he's dopey enough, I can imagine him forgetting... If it weren't for trying to establish that Mark visits his parents' graves once a week, the whole second half of this comic shouldn't've existed.
Julie's sweatdrop count: 4
Panel 1. Mark's kind of embarrassed.
Panel 7. Charity Hawkins, 1958-1998. Jon Hawkins, 1959-1998. I'm not sure why Mark didn't put up a more elaborate monument. Though he was probably too grief-stricken to do anything at all when it happened; someone else probably had to make the arrangements and such.
Panel 8. I don't think Mark thinks the dead can read, but he still needs some kind of parental figure.
Panel 1. Actually, as long as I can remember, I've kind of liked graveyards. Quiet, some grass and trees--all things hard to find near where I live. ^_-
Panel 3. Wow, deep psychological discussion in "Mark and Jenny." Or something.
Panel 5. I've been fortunate enough to have never lost anyone close yet, myself. But it's sad.
Panel 9. I'm still not sure how time passes in the world of "Mark and Jenny." I need to map that out sometime, but I haven't yet. I don't think it passes in real time (ie. everyone's a few years older now than they were when I started) because that's not fair when I abandon them for months on end...
Panel 11. I'm not sure why Carson didn't grow up to be a sociopath, if no one loved him when he was little. (He probably got into a lot of trouble at whatever school he went to, but would also make friends quickly, being a tough and adventurous boy.)
Panel 2. Poor Mark has several friends (and can make as many phony friends as he wants; he's rich!). So he's feeling badly for Carson, who has none except Maria.
Panel 6. These two men recognize their competition for Maria with surprisingly good humor.
Panel 8. The idea "In a different world, maybe we could have been friends" is exceedingly common in Anime. I explain the weird shading in the notes.
Panel 9. I personally still value friendship above romance. Far above. I guess I haven't grown up yet.
Panel 10. I think most of us know what it's like to be alone when everyone else has someone (romantically or not).
Panel 11. Shounen-ai (boys' love) or yaoi comics are kind of common in Japan. Both are tales of, well, boys' love, though shounen-ai might just be about friendship or childhood love, while yaoi are generally sexual. Female fans of TV series in this country, even, seem to have a strange desire to pair up male characters in fanfictions, too. It kind of baffles me to see headers for things like Kenshin+Sanosuke or Sanosuke+Saitou fanfics or fan comics...@_@
Weep weep is a nice sound effect, though.
Julie's sweatdrop count: 6 (I think)
Panel 1. Carson and Mark knocking on Jenny's door. Looks ominous.
Panel 2. I like how I drew Mark here, anyway.
The shadow under the chin is the one shadow I can vaguely draw, but if I draw it too dark (like here) it looks stupid. If I draw it any lighter, though, you don't notice it. So I've abandoned it, pretty much.
Panel 4. Yup, Mark, that pretty much sums it up. Thanks.
Panel 5. A face deformity vaguely related to chibification. (Too lazy to link to the last commentary. Chibification is an Anime thing where characters lose their noses and get small and cute (usually look like kids). Dunno exactly why. Or if that all goes over your head, since I think I don't actually deform any of my characters' bodies anymore, just say she's making a funny face.)
Panel 9. I felt about like Mark when I realized that there were only 2 seats in a real Corvette. (Only 2 in my toy Corvette, technically, too, but there's an extra space in the back it looked like you could maybe cram people into...)
Panel 10. Not quite right for Jenny to feel left out. Mark gets left out of a LOT more comics than Jenny does, I think. I'm still not sure why, since I happen to like Mark better, myself...
Thoughts of the week. No clue why I was ranting. Unless that was the time they killed off Lucy Knight on ER. That was too much. Actually, I think that's exactly what I was talking about. I was still ranting about it two weeks later!
2/11/00: Driving Insane page 2
Panel 2. As my former roommate noted, these comics aren't nearly as much fun if you don't know me personally. I put all sorts of in-jokes in. But then, if you got e-mail from me starting in about 2000 and going through pretty much all of 2001, you would've seen that I was the self-styled Duchess of Botan Rice Candy... The stuff itself is weird--kind of gel-ish candy (not quite squishy enough to be gummy) with an edible wrapper made of rice paper. (Melts in your mouth, not in your hands.) And a plastic wrapper over that. Each box comes with six pieces of candy inside and one (probably bizarre) sticker.
Panel 4. Jenny has a bus pass. Bus passes are so expensive, though; you could get a cheap car for the price of a bus pass, I think. (But then you have to buy gas and insurance.) As I noted sometime or other, I took the bus a lot while I was in the dorms in college.
Panel 6. Bad timing for Mark to be stingy with his bribes. He's usually quite generous. And as long as there's no public watchdog groups watching, his bribes are usually very effective.
Panel 9. The lines under Jenny's eye are I think to indicate she's pale. She's appalled, at any rate.
2/18/00: Driving Insane page 3
Julie's sweatdrop count: 6
Panel 1. The bus's full advertisment reads something like: "The bus--transportation for everyone but Jenny."
Jenny's missing nose is something like chibification.
Panel 5. Come to think of it, I had a friend about this time who would try to buy me and my friends dinner and such. Of course, he wasn't as rich as Mark. (Probably will be someday, though.) I never did object as strongly as Jenny, though.
Panel 8. Yes, semantics are at play here. (TECHNICALLY no one said anything INSIDE the purse was stolen...) Pretty silly, though.
Panel 9. Kind of an inappropriate sweatdrop. Why someone would be sweating at someone handing them lots of money, I don't know. Maybe because Mark's actions are socially unacceptable, but if some weirod handed me $500, whether society thought the guy was normal or not, I'd smile politely and take it!
Thoughts of the week. I still consider Lucy Knight's murder the beginning of the end of the series "ER." Though I've taken to watching it again. It's still over-the-top and bad, and we're all waiting for Mark Greene to die. (I never was a Maude Flanders fan, but it still seemed kind of cold to kill her off.)
Next time. At least I finally admitted I had no plan.
2/25/00: Driving Insane page 4
Panels 2-3. Actually, no, Jenny's in it for the action (though helping people is good too).
Panel 6. I explain who's on the board in this panel on the main page. But it also shows off the ineptitude of Mark and Jenny as crimefighters. Sometimes, anyway.
Dusty e-mailed the Mark and Jenny crew and asked why they didn't rescue him.
Panel 7. I hate parallel parking. I don't think I've done it since Driver's Ed (and there weren't any cars then, just plastic orange cones--and the instructor was telling me what to do the whole time!).
Panel 9. Bus-o-rama headquarters.
Panel 10. Awfully polite for a secretary. (Nice hair, though.)
Random link of the week: The page isn't anywhere near as funny if you're not exhausted, I'm told. Again, I did laugh out loud at the thought of Sanosuke singing the first Japanese Card Captor Sakura theme song, though. Maybe it's also funny if he's singing the lame American theme too...
Panel 1. I did all the text on the computer. Smart me. Yeah, I know (now) that newspaper headlines aren't capitalized like books. They also aren't in Palatino font.
"State's Richest Man Donates Two Million to Transit System
Mark Hawkins is definitely an unassuming millionaire. Admittedly, he has terrible fashion sense--at the informal, impromptu reception held today, he sported an outdated blue knit sweatshirt and a pair of khakis. Underneath his silly-looking clothes, though, the man has a big heart.
'I got my friend kicked off the bus,' he explains with an embarrassed smile. 'I felt bad, so I had to find a way to get her back on.' He laughs. 'I tried to buy her a car, but she refused. This was all I could do.'
The money will be spent on expanding bus service to the weekends. When asked if this resembled bribery, Ericson said, 'Of course not! Pay us a couple million and you can do what you want. It's good for customers. What's wrong with that?'
The city plans to b--"
Panel 3. I mentioned that somewhere else... My brother calculated that I just need $4 million to live happily off the interest, myself. Mark has considerably more than that.
Panel 5. I take hostages a lot in my stories and comics.
Panel 11. I wonder what Mark's credit limit is....
Thoughts of the week. I'm not so sure I'm hooked on the Mac now. But the Windows OS is just so UGLY..... OS X is supposed to be cool (for the Mac) but hard to learn....and none of my old programs would run well at all on it...(the only program I have that's even optimized for OS 9 (what I have now) is Graphic Converter, that shareware program I bought that I still use to color "Mark and Jenny" with...)
I think this is the Spring Break I went to Las Vegas, but I'm not entirely sure.
Panel 1. I'm not quite sure where they are. If it's supposed to be Skip's house, I abandoned that floor plan/design later...
Panel 3. First appearance of Skip and Suzie. You can read more about them in the character profile section. Basically, they were meant to be Mark and Jenny's nemesises, and also their opposites (more or less). Skip and Mark are both action verbs, etc.
Panel 6. I've always thought that threats of mutilation aren't used enough in movies. I mean, if you have a hostage and say if he misbehaves you'll kill him, he knows you won't be able to get the ransom if you're dead. But anyone'd probably still pay a ransom for a one-eyed hostage. (Of course, I guess they'd also be more likely to track down the hostage-taker and kill him or her....)
Oh well. If anyone ever told you I don't have a sick mind, they were probably lying.
Panel 7. I don't know if I meant 'prettyboy' as one word or two. Probably two, but I kinda like the look of it as one...
Panel 9. I'll just say Suzie's lying, not revealing an actual plan they had in mind purely for the sake of a joke, only to change the plan of who to kidnap a page or three later.
Panel 11. The one in the middle is Mark dressed as Nurse Joy (note the Chansey in his hand). The one on the left is Mark posing for the camera in his favorite...er...woman of ill repute outfit. (Why he's posing for his future arch-nemesis's camera, I don't know. Unless when Suzie says "these photos we took," she means "stole".... The one on the right, of course, is from the graveyard arc that took place a little bit ago.
Panel 13. Carson's apparent perversion (like it's easy to be stuck sitting down around a woman in a mini-skirt?) becomes a running-gag.
Thoughts of the week. What the heck? I actually left my computer home on Spring Break? What do you know; I was going to Vegas. Probably the only reason I left my computer behind....I hate to be without it anymore, even for a week. But now I have an iMac, so I only have one big piece to transport...
Letter 1. From my former roommate, of course. Miki from "Revolutionary Girl Utena." Minus the blue hair. I'm sure Mark would've enjoyed the wig or hair dye, though...
Letter 2. From "Out of Fika," which is currently...out. (Witty, huh? I'll bet no one's ever come up with that line before.) Man, I love how Dusty talks, though. It's so cute. I seem to recall that arc from Chris Muse's comic had heroes who went around tagging people who weren't in immediate need of help but could be helped later...? Oh, and Chris Muse hates Carson. HATES him.
3/24/00: Exchange Rate page 2 (this commentary segment rated PG for use of a word that would probably annoy parents if their kids said it repeatedly)
Panel 1. Possibly my most detailed briefcase drawing to date. I've turned super-lazy. Maria's speech just shows how very much she cares about Carson, doesn't it? How desperately she loves him and all. ^_-
Panel 2. Is Mark incredibly noble, or incredibly stupid? Ah, the eternal question--if you really love someone, will you let them be with the one THEY love, or will you try to persue them, knowing that you're the only one who REALLY loves them? Not that that question has much relevance to everyday life...
Panel 4. Again, I have a lot of trouble drawing characters really close together. (A lot better than Maria's "hands" in panel 3, though.)
Panel 6. Clearly, Mark is of the 'make one's lover happy even at the cost of your own happiness' school of thought. (Not that a million dollars is anything to him, but he's certainly taking the high road in returning a guy who's in love with his own girlfriend...)
Panel 8. Well, I don't like that panel at all, Jenny, so we're even.
Panel 9. Shadows courtesy of the line tool on Graphic Converter. (To be fair, I didn't have a mouse pen at the time.)
Panel 10. Mark clearly has some serious problems. I mean, Suzie doesn't even have on what my family fondly calls "hooker boots." You know, the kind Jessie wears.
Panel 11. Yes, Mark has some serious problems. Of course, I have a crush on James, so we're probably even.
Panel 2. That's ONLY a reference to the prior jokes about Mark's being gay. I don't think James on Pokémon is gay. Transvestites often aren't gay, after all. ^_^;
Panel 3. Of course, Mark is referring to the Campbells Soup slogan "Mm, mm, good." First reference to Mark's soup obsession. ^_- (Of course, I hadn't thought of "Iron Chef" Campbells at the time this comic was made.)
Panel 6. I was really pretty before I understood the jokes in the vein of "Is that a camera lens or are you just happy to see me"? Those jokes are really sick, aren't they???
Panel 10. Mark overly-personifying inanimate objects. I do the same, but at least I don't assign them genders...
Next time. I wish I knew what English class I was referring to. Surely I wasn't referring to my early English literature class with my beloved professor Jennifer Bryan??? I adored that class so much I almost took a class on Chaucer with her. Chaucer wrote in Middle English. She taught her students in that class how to read and pronounce it. (It's gibberish otherwise.) And the two stories from the Canterbury Tales that we DID read, one was the dirtiest thing I've read in recent memory. But she was THAT GOOD of a professor. No, it probably wasn't her class....then whose was it???
Oh, I think it was my American literature course, which was also a fine course. So small that I shouldn't've drawn plans in it, but what are you going to do? I drew plans even in classes I loved, if they had any lecture element at all...
Page 100 of Mark and Jenny. At least 3 direct or indirect references to some form of perversion. Man, I run a classy comic.
Panel 1. I'm pretty sure I had this wicked and duplicitous plan in mind early on.
Panel 3. Mark is not leaking oil. That's tears.
Panel 6. That'd probably kill a real person.... I love when people are upside-down and their words turn upside-down to match. But 'ow' upside down is 'mo'...
Panels 8-9. Always with the kinky things...
Panel 10. I'm not sure why they didn't gag her. Of course, Suzie had no problem with committing illegal acts when she wasn't on the receiving end...and AGAIN with the kinkiness!
Random link of the week. As I mentioned in the previous commentary, I don't care much for the Canterbury Tales, and they're VERY hard to read in their original form. I think that's the website I went to to read them in modern(er) English. (We were assigned the originals to read though--two stories, I think (it was a survey course)--which I read after reading the modern translations, so I could understand them. I'm a nerd.)
Panel 2. Two conversations going on at once. Rather confusing.
Panel 3. Mark's financial adviser is not so happy with Mark's announcement.
Panel 5. Pager? What is this pager you speak of? This was before EVERYONE had a cell phone.
Panel 6. Like I said I think in the character profiles, Suzie and Skip have this Sailor Neptune/Sailor Uranus thing going on, where they agree that should anything happen to either of them, the one left still must accomplish the goal at all costs. (Of course, the goal here isn't to save the world, but to make Mark miserable and/or get rich.)
Panel 9. Mark's eyes are supposed to be big and pathetic. He didn't turn into an alien.
Panel 12. Bulging angry vein on Jenny's cheek. Pounding sounds like someone shooting someone through the phone. For the sake of this joke, anyway.
Panel 13. I've always liked the idea of characters taking courses in hostage negotiations. Probably from that episode of the Simpsons with the subliminal message tape where Marge briefly imagines Homer getting the hostage negotation tape...
Random link of the week. I still go to Anime News Service, but only occasionally. I guess ever since I moved back to Phoenix and stopped going to my Tucson Animation Screening Society meetings, I'm not so obsessed with Anime...
Panel 1. Interesting layout.
Panel 2. Remember that Seinfeld episode where Elaine wound up with an alter-ego "Suzie" and took great offense to being called "Suze?" I think that's probably where I picked up that nickname...
Panel 3. Since Skip and Suzie had agreed not to let anything get in their way of torturing Mark and taking all his worldly goods, Suzie's flattered that Skip would let Mark remain a millionare (technically) to get her back.
Panel 8. Ah, the always brave Maria...
Panel 9. And Mark's stirring words of comfort. My characters tend to say kind of stupid things when they're in really bad situations. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Mark's already being affectionate with the phone.
Panel 12. When I was...uh...younger, yeah, I used to love the gag of a guy getting hit in the crotch. Now I'm far too sophisticated for such lowbrow humor. (Never mind my brother and I laughing uproariously a few days ago at an episode of Titus where his bratty teenage niece kicks Tommy (who's dressed as a clown) in the crotch, after Titus warning Tommy that he really should wear a cup around that girl. Several minutes later the girl kicks Titus in the crotch and hurts her foot. Titus, of course, was smart enough to wear a cup. All right, I guess you had to be there.)
Panel 2. Pointless sweatdrop.
Panel 4. Again with the attachment to inanimate objects. This coming from someone who's still sad about giving her nearly mint condition Magic Star and Paradise My Little Ponies to Goodwill...
Panel 6. You know, when I have a bad day usually I go to bed or take a nap and it's a lot better when I wake up. That is NOT a sign of depression! Shut up!
Panel 7. Obviously Carson's "Shut up" is directed towards Suzie, not Jenny.
Panel 10. I can't draw musculature or, well, the area I think it's funny when guys get kicked in. ^_- Stupid sexy Flanders... Jenny's []'s are my feeble attempt to write an aside. Later I found just using a finer-point pen works better. (I used to use rounded ()'s but found those look too much like C's. And I sometimes forgot to close them. ^^;)
Panel 1. Jenny's solution to everything is to generally drive around until they find what they're looking for. In a better-written comic that wouldn't work.
Panel 4. Mark consoling himself with a phone and Hun. Maybe he needs some ice cream.
Panel 8. Actually, I find the thought of a man in tights to be profoundly disturbing.
Panel 11. Jenny's a top-quality detective.
As to Carson and Jenny's outfits, they're gray instead of black because it's much easier to color gray. If you do black you either fill it all in (making everyone blobs) or have to make some of the lines white...it's messy.
Random link of the week. There's a URL I had lost...I don't find Mark and Jenny's stats to be so depressing anymore....
Panel 1. I've never understood the appeal of the backside, either. Yet another part of the human anatomy I can't draw, too.
Panel 4. I didn't fully understand Skip's motivations at this point. He was probably trying to break Mark's heart and then kill Maria anyway.
Panel 6. Skip's talking. Really.
Panel 8. Colored Carson's ponytail by mistake.
Panels 12-13. Yup, sacrificed anything making sense for the sake of a cheap joke. Left me in a fix for next week!
Thoughts of the week. I have forgotten almost all the essays I wrote in classes... I really was good at statistics though!
5/12/00: Exchange Rate page 10
Panel 2. Carson looking frightfully feminine.
Panel 3. Another one probably inspired by Seinfeld, with Elaine and her big head. Though Conan O'Brien complains about how big his head is too.
Panel 7. Yeah, Maria's logic doesn't make much sense, unless she's just trying to get outside so Jenny and Carson'll help her....
Panels 9-11. Poorly laid out; I read from panel 9 to panel 11, then back up to 10, and was quite confused. ^^;
Panel 12. Apparently Jenny overheard Maria's moronic plan.
Thoughts of the week. Predictably, my current webhost has slid in quality since I joined up with them as well. But I'm quite pleased to have a domain name...
5/19/00: Exchange Rate page 11
Panel 1. Convenient bad guy rope. Convenient freakishly oversized sweatdrop on the side of Maria's head. (Did I explain that one on this page yet? Sweatdrops=Anime characters get them when they're uncomfortable/etc.)
Panel 11. Are those hearts on Mark's boxers...?
Panel 12. Look, look! Mark's nice (untying girl); Skip's evil (tying girl up). Blatant enough for you? ^_-
Panel 13. My roommate for three and a half years did taekwondo. She got most of my other friends in Tucson to do taekwondo too. By my third semester of my senior year I think everyone I knew in Tucson did taekwondo...@_@ Except a guy or two...
Thoughts of the week. I had major problems using AOL. Earlier (way back in 1997) it wouldn't let me access Xoom (remember before they were nbci? Or defunct?). That pretty much led to me paying for my webpage hosting and having juliestudio.simplenet.com.
If you haven't been around for a really long time and don't read my main index page (unless I took down that 'Formerly located at juliestudio.simplenet.com' heading ^^;) you might not know the history of my webpage. It started out on U of A's server (http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jbihn I believe). It had 5 MB of storage space. I eventually put my comics up at Xoom.com (I don't even remember the old URL). 11 MB of storage space for my comics. (At the time that was some of "Mair the Defender" and a few issues of "Fox Tales." I planned to take down "Fox Tales" issues as I ran out of space, and replace them with new ones.) But when I was home for winter break 1997, I wasn't able to get on my Xoom account, which caused me great stress. I finally discovered Simplenet, and decided it was worth $10/month to not be so stressed about not being able to update when I said I was going to. Even better, they offered unlimited space and bandwidth, so I could put up as much stuff as I wanted!
Everything went beautifully until spring of 2000, when yahoo bought Simplenet out. Service got much worse. Then in fall of 2000, yahoo decided to impose space limits and charge a mandatory I think $15 or $20 a month for very limited space and bandwidth. (I think 50 or 100 MB of space, which my site was well over.) I looked and looked and looked and finally took someone's advice and signed up with Hostrocket. They had 200 MB of space and 10?GB of transfer for $10/month. Plus I finally got to get my own domain name! I probably should've thought of something wittier than "juliestudio.com" but it was easiest to just take away the Simplenet from my old address.
Later I was around my 200 MB space limit so I had to upgrade to the $15/month, 350 MB of space and 15 GB of transfer package. Hostrocket's service hasn't been great lately but hopefully it'll get better again. (Oddly enough, once I manually moved my whole webpage, it now only takes about 150 MB of space, 50 MB under my old limit...I don't know what the problem was...oh well; now I can have a BBS and be pretty confident that I won't get booted off for server strain...
Oh, and yes, I pretty much DID just go out and buy a new computer.
Random link of the week. The line "AOL.com, the cause of, and solution to, all life's problems!" was a direct take from Homer Simpson's "Beer, the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
Panel 1. Check out that bookcase. No, I don't think I used a ruler...
Panel 5. Another reference to my unique drawing skills.
Panel 6. First instance of color in "Mark and Jenny." Meant for blushes and blood only. Eventually developed into full color. Kind of.
Panel 10. I might baby-talk to cats, but I don't think I use the word "widdle." That's something.
Panel 11. More baby talk.
Panel 12. Yeah, cats can be mean. But then you feel kinda like you've been given a gift when they're nice to you... It's pretty low of Mark to be concerned for Hun and not Suzie, though.
Panel 2. Ah, nothing funnier than comic misunderstanding. Wait; anything's funnier than comic misunderstanding. Oh well.
Panel 6. Mark trying to look pathetic, but he looks more like an alien...
Panel 9. Mark's a Christian, though I doubt the Southern Baptist Convention would be too fond of him...
Panel 12. While I technically have nothing against the French, I like to diss them anyway. I guess since I never thought the French language was particularly romantic...(ie. it's overrated...)
I'm amazed that I colored this one on the new computer (didn't I?) and it came out so very very grainy...
Panel 3. Mark apparently doesn't want to hear the falese impression that Jenny thinks is the truth...
Panel 11. ....
Panel 12. At least I knew that picture of Carson crying was scary. ^_-
Thoughts of the week. My iMac space heater is coming in quite handy right now; the house is cold, but my room is temperate... I still have that same old iMac, almost two years later. If I maxed out its RAM it'd be a lot better...but it still gets the job done. Barely.
I fit my old computer and monitor and my iMac and my scanner all on my desk that summer. My old scanner wouldn't work with my iMac.
Temping earned me all of 2 1/2 days of work that summer. Good job.
And I'm still getting junk mail from MacMall, though I think most of mine's from PC Warehouse.
6/16/00: Exchange Rate page 15
Panel 1. Depressing news was supposed to go along with Skip's depressive life.
Panel 2. That's supposed to be the back of the couch. I assume.
Panel 10. Balloon on top gets read first.
Panel 14. Maria's crying, not blushing. Hence why it's not red. Wait a minute; panel 17's a blush. Oh well.
Panel 16. Not well-done, but I kind of like it anyway.
Panel 17. I gave Skip a character trait (besides depression)! He's a moron when it comes to matters of love.
Thoughts of the week. Heck, I'd still sell plans to people for $5. But they're so sketchy probably no one would enjoy them.
And yes, I did go to Expo (didn't meet any of my comic fans except Kendra, very briefly) and Disneyland. Disneyland was worth the price of admission. Because a friend got me and my two friends in for free. ^_^
The kitty Digimon, of course, is Gatomon. Ty's name is spelled Tai. I got a Gatomon plush at Anime Expo....
If I've still got it installed, I can talk to my computer and tell it to open up Graphic Converter, tell me a joke, change the desktop background, etc.
6/23/00: Exchange Rate page 16
Panel 1. I drew Skip's hand and the rope on the computer with my hockey-puck mouse. See, I rather forgot that Maria was tied up when I drew this page. Oops.
Panel 3. I was thinking deep philisophical thoughts about death at this time. Maybe. Probably not.
Panel 6. Wow; Maria actually has some guts. Good for her!
Panel 8. So many outspoken obnoxious women in my comics. Wonder where that came from...MY mom isn't outspoken at all.....(I guess you couldn't tell in text form, but that was sarcasm. ^_-)
Panel 10. A storm cloud. Not a small motorcar.
Panel 12. I thought Skip's backstory made him more sympathetic, but I don't think anyone likes him.
7/14/00: Exchange Rate page 17
Panel 1. Oh, Skip hitting a girl. Guess that's enough to keep anyone from liking him.
Panels 5-6. More poorly laid-out panels. But my stated goal has always been simply to get the point across. And aside from everyone apparently turning into big-headed children (chibification) I guess I succeede.
I actually did make everyone slightly darker to ry to make it look like night. At least, I think I did...
Panel 10. LET her go, not Bet her go, which is what it looks like...
Panel 11. Note Maria's stylish sweatdrop earring. ^_-
Panel 13. My former roommate's also a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts...
7/14/00: Exchange Rate page 18
Panel 1. Kind of subtle. Not like I'd actually draw anyone naked. ^^;
Panel 3. And now Maria's dislocated her shoulder!
Panels 5-8. Should've been laid-out in a different order, I suppose.
Panel 6. Skip's cryptic remark is in reference to the fact that if he decides he needs to kill Maria he'll do it in her sleep.
Panel 7. Earlier Skip let Maria sit tied up in a bedroom; now she's stuck in a closet. Note the witty reversal from Mark, who let Jenny and Carson lock Suzie up in a closet but then later let her have a bedroom. I made that up; it wasn't intentional at all. Which is just as well, since it wasn't that witty.
Panel 10. .....no, we're not even going to get into a talk about leg shaving.
Panel 14. One of the first vaguely witty plans that's been executed in this comic. Not that anyone would mistake a balloon for a human head, but hey.
Panel 15. A popular pair of sentences.
Random link of the week. The quality of the music on the Effect (as they call themselves) varies drastically, but they're still worth a preset..... Of course, they're broadcast out of Twin Falls Idaho and rebroadcast other places, like Phoenix...
7/21/00: Exchange Rate page 19
Panels 2-3. Not the most effectively laid-out of panels. Oh well. Of course that's blood from Skip's bloody nose on his face. Ow.
Panel 6. Balloons instead of canatalopes. I guess that's a little better... I like Carson's expression though.
Panel 7. Dr. Dora's supposed to be looking at Carson.
Panel 8. Carson's putting his hair back in a ponytail.
Panel 13. Mark tries bribery again. A pretty sad attempt at last-panel humor on my part...
Thoughts of the week. I don't despise the name "Blissey" anymore, but I still infinitely prefer Chanseys.
Next time. I still am pretty sure that Mark's the most popular character in this series. Though Iron Chef Campbells might come close. ^_-
7/28/00: Exchange Rate page 20
Panel 3. Skip's never met Dr. Schlagel, but he makes a good point.
Panel 4. That's a vein bulging in anger on Dr. Schlagel, not a weird tattoo.
Panels 8-10. Wow, Dr. Schlagel makes a couple good points too. Freaky.
Panel 12. Skip again reveals his motive.
Random link of the week. They lied; it's 2002 right now and Utena still isn't out...
Panel 1. I definitely tried to shade the panels of this one so it looked like it was dark out.
Panel 2. Wow; Skip really has done pretty well for himself. Aside from living in a square-shaped house like I always make...
Panel 5. Yeah, yeah, Jenny probably would've just gone in and tried to knock Skip silly herself. Except if she did anything that wound up hurting Maria then Mark wouldn't be her friend anymore...-_-;;;
Panel 11. Carson's trying to encourage Mark. He fails.
Panel 15. I wonder where they got heels big enough for Carson's feet....maybe I don't want to know. I'll bet a well-placed kick from someone with heels on would hurt, though.
Thoughts of the week. I think Maggie's bladder infections are actually a result of when they chlorinate our water so she refuses to drink it (sometimes her "infections" will spontaneously go away). So if they over-chlorinate our water again (they do it sometimes to clean out the pipes, and *I* hate to drink it, and my nose isn't as sensitive as Maggie's!) we'll probably have to buy her bottled water....how weird is that...
Random links of the week. I think that's my most elaborate one of those...
8/11/00: Exchange Rate page 22
Panel 3. I guess that wasn't any better laid-out than when Skip ran back into the house and locked the door. Oh well.
Panel 4. Awww! Big-eyed Mark and a cat.
Panel 6. A self-defense-type move I think. You can do amazing things with joint manipulation.
Panel 7. I've been abusing fight clouds ever since I first saw them in cartoons.
Panel 8. Again with the scary alien eyes that are supposed to look sad and pathetic.
Panel 9. Dynamic panels filled with motion have never been my strong suit. But then, if Skip had looked like he was pulling on the rope, he probably would've had his hands off the panel...
Panel 14. Mark's too nice.
Panel 16. I had a hard time coming up with a word that reflected that Mark was stupid without actually being offensive (some of the words for 'stupid' aren't very nice). 'Simple' is kind of an old way of saying 'stupid' but it kind of worked. Though Mark's retaliation could've been better.
Random link of the week. I haven't used postmark.net in forever.
Next time. Anyone ever read Jonathan Swift's essay "A Modest Proposal?" I think I was just horrified the first time I read it (gruesome descriptions) but it's funny too. Haven't read it since high school, though.
8/18/00: Exchange Rate page 23
Panel 1. Incomplete parenthesis. Oh well.
Panel 5. When we adopted Maggie from the Humane Society, my father and brother didn't want a cat at all. (But Mom and I did. And whatever side has Mom on it usually wins, even if it's a 3-1 vote.) So officially the cat was mine and Mom's. But she got tired of the cat very soon and transfered full ownership of her to me. Which I don't think is fair...at any rate, whenever Maggie throws up it's always me or Dad (well, usually Dad because he's up earlier) who cleans it up, and if she even throws up right in front of my mom, she makes someone else come in to clean it up.
I'm just a little resentful. ^_-
Maggie meows a lot too.
Panel 6. That's why Mark likes Hun so much.
Panel 8. I hope the fact that Mark cried (instead of got angry) at Skip's cruelty doesn't make him too much of a wimp...
Panel 11. Mark tries to cash in on Skip's idea to make him miserable.
Panel 17. Again proving how out of it Skip is when it comes to love....
Thoughts of the week. I miss that schedule of school...Tuesdays and Thursdays were awful, but Mondays and Fridays my class was on *TV* so I didn't come to campus at all. Wednesday I had a class late at night, but nothing else....
Random link of the week. I freely admit to loving the show "Arthur" now. I'm sure the website is painfully slow on my 28.8 connection though. ;_;
8/25/00: Exchange Rate page 24
Panel 5. Note the transmitter on Cat's collar.
Panel 8. Sweatdrop sliding down Maria's leg. I think the strangest sweatdrop I've seen in Anime was the one on a LAMP once (I believe that was in Fushigi Yuugi).
Panel 9. Again Maria gets stuck in a small place. Maybe she has big hips...
Panel 14. Both of my most recent roommates were allergic to cats...
Panel 17. The blindfold is a bit much.
Panel 19. Mark again hoping Hun will help him. Hun is a cat. Cats are not helpful...
Random link of the week. I finally bought my own pencil sharpener. It does the job.
Panel 3. Not only does Dr. Schlagel pretty much just spout buzzwords from TV psychologists, she does so poorly.
Panel 6. Jenny doesn't want anything bad to happen to Mark. (She's more neutral towards Maria, I'm afraid...) A very lazy bulldozer drawing.
Panel 7. I guess Carson should've specified that he was talking about Maria.
Panel 9. I like the sound effect 'chunk.'
Panel 10. A super-lazy fight cloud. I think there's two fists and that's about it coming out.
Panels 11-12. You might've thought that tons of bricks falling from a two-story house might land on the bulldozer causing the damage, but apparently not.
Panel 1. Nice shot of rubble, but doesn't really correspond to Skip's house...
Panel 6. ::wonders if Maria reads too many romance novels:: But then, I'm afraid that neither Carson nor Mark is exactly a knight in shining armor...
Panel 9. The scene/cutaway of someone's face is I think an Anime thing. The angry eyes definitely are--pretty much taken from the Rurouni Kenshin manga.
Panel 10. I do like Dr. Schlagel's helmet.
Panel 11. Maria's eyes are tiny in shock. Kinda funny-looking, though; should've made her pupils bigger...
Panel 12. Maria actually showing some concern for Mark! I'm guessing that by this point I knew who Maria would choose....
Panel 13. Bad choice on style of drawing Mark's eyes.....
Random link of the week. I miss cable...I've got 9 tapes or so of Newsradio that I taped off of A&E and about 2 1/2 tapes of Daria and that's all I have to remember cable by......
Next time. I like that one. Too bad I'm not writing witty teasers anymore.
9/22/00: Exchange Rate page 27
I tried dating my installments in the header. Didn't last.
Panel 2. Eh, I kinda liked doing that to Maria. ^_-
Panel 3. First use of the color pink. Which was just a pattern of red and white squares done with the paintbrush tool. Nothing wrong with that.
Panel 4. Rather eloquent words for Jenny. Or anyone else in this series.
Panel 12. Lamest action panel ever. But I wasn't in a mood to draw it any better. And I think it got the point across. (With a subtext of "Julie can't draw backgrounds.")
Panel 13. Why Dr. Schlagel cares about Mark being buried alive, I don't know. Oh, right, the promise of a Corvette.
Thoughts of the week. Yeah, I wasn't doing too well back then... And yeah, it really was wrong of me to go into that much detail about the problems in my life, but I'll leave it up for the sake of completeness. (The other rant that didn't make it was my fear that my rent would double once this roommate (and her friend) left. Thank God that didn't come to pass (well, it honestly would've been something I technically could've dealt with, but I really didn't want to ^^;), but I was quite worried. (And expenses did go up anyway, what with having the cable, cable modem, electric, and propane bills all being split two ways instead of four...))
That house let all sorts of bitey bugs in too. (But I still miss living there...)
9/29/00: Exchange Rate page 28
Panel 1. I like the little clarification box with arrow, even if it's silly. (Phrasing likely inspired by "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince." Though I just heard he changed his name back to Prince...)
Panels 2-3. Cat looks like a toy.
Panel 5. This suddenly reminds me a bit of the World Trade Center. But this was....nearly a year earlier. And no one died, which is much nicer....
Panel 8. I used to have a real obsession with stories where everyone thinks someone's dead but really they're not. You know, so you can see everyone's reaction and stuff. I'm pretty sick.
Panels 12-13. The lines on the panels are an Anime/manga thing, but danged if I know their use. Whatever their use, I don't think it was appropriate right there.
Panel 15. Guess Mark wasn't buried very deep. Who cares; he's all right! ^_^ (Well, mostly.)
Thoughts of the week. The Internet connection going out was because it was hooked up to a pseudo-firewall (a Linux box) and I accidentally knocked the plug out of the wall (or something). So the whole thing would've need set up again to let us on the Internet. Problem being that to set it up again required getting a monitor and keyboard attached to it and doing something that MAYBE one of the people in our house could've done (probably not though). We never got it fixed, and eventually had to just use the cable modem one at a time.
10/6/00: Exchange Rate page 29
Panel 1. Dr. Schlagel's jacket gets used as a sling for Mark's arm. How convenient.
Panel 2. Ah, yes, the cliched syndrome of girls going out of their way to help injured guys. Though it would be flattering (I guess) if a guy got hurt to save a girl...
Panel 4. Does Jenny have basic first-aid skills? Probably...
Panel 7. When I was younger I always thought those two- or three-headed shots where a character's supposedly looking in all directions looked weird. This one certainly did.
Panel 10. You always have to save the cat...
Panel 13. Ow.
Thoughts of the week. I still watch Conan O'Brien (from whose show those examples were culled). I can still sing the Lumbar Lou song (I think it was a chiropractor) and also "I've got bulletproof legs, I've got bulletproof legs! You can't touch me, I've got bulletproof legs!" (Invariably after this guy came out singing and dancing a sinister figure would shoot him in the chest, felling him.)
10/13/00: Exchange Rate page 30
Panel 4. Am I the only one whose mom would clear her throat and wait for a 'please' when asked to do something? Now I pull that on her, though; if she tells me to do something I wait for a 'please.'
Panel 5. Competition is fun. I don't remember if I was in that Sociology class that taught that when people are doing a familiar task in a group setting they'll perform better or not.
Panel 6. Another masterfully drawn panel. ^_-
Panel 8. Anyone who doesn't want small animals to die can't be all bad.
Panel 12. Well, I still like the line "were nice-guy." This was a Halloween reference for my friend who likes Halloween. (Plus I did find it interesting that it was a Friday the 13th and a full moon on the same day. Oh, wait, I put that in my notes on the page. Oh well.)
Random link of the week. Hopefully Hostrocket will get better. Hopefully...they were great when I started....-_-;;;
10/26/00: Exchange Rate page 31
Hey, my keyboard is squeaking. Wow, that's incredibly annoying.
Panel 1. Ew, blood.
Panel 6. Skip was attempting wordplay, but it kind of failed.
Panel 7. Julie was attempting that cool Anime shadow-thing sad characters sometimes get over their faces (especially their eyes) but it rather failed.
Panel 8. Mark was depressed at one time? What the heck?
Panel 9. Carson and Jenny both showing off their strong suits.
Panel 12. I believe Mark's worth a bit more than $6 billion, but it was a reference to Trigun, as I explained in my thoughts... I found out many of my readers ARE, in fact, Anime fans, so I thought I'd do a reference to Anime.
Thoughts of the week. Same index picture for over a year, even after I insist that the characters have to stop making Pokémon references. ::sigh::
Of course all of Trigun is available on DVD now. I have the last DVD but haven't watched it yet. I've seen episodes 1-21, but not 22 (DVD has episodes 23-26). What am I to do?
Me, I still can't guess the reason I didn't update the week before. ^^;
11/6/00: Exchange Rate page 32
Panels 2-3. Unnamed servants.
Panel 4. Note reads: "Please pardon the inconvenience, but I have to take revenge on your master--evil---------I mean," I'm not sure if Skip gave up on writing it or I did.
Panel 6. Like a bad kung-fu movie. First appearance of Iron Chef Campbells, one of my first characters with facial hair....
Panel 7. "You're name's Campbells. Like the soup?" "No, I hate the stuff" is rather an old joke.
Panel 8. I like the word "miscreant." I also like to add "of ____" to the end of my favorite items. I use a clear lucite "Triangle of Death" to draw the straight lines for my comics...
Panel 10. You ever shot staples at anyone? It's fun.
Panel 14. "Glom" is a word that's even occurred in girls' fashion magazines. (The only reason I know that is because the girls' bathrooms in the dorm were usually decorated with pages ripped from said magazines.) "Glomp" I think is more in the Anime fandom....girls glomp onto their favorite characters all the time...
Panel 15. Taekwondo can be impressive, but doesn't always necessarily teach against unexpected moves. Though I doubt any real martial art truly prepares one to take a hit in the back of the head...
Thoughts of the week. I think over 50% of Americans have cable. I still don't. ::sob::
The house I had then, the heat didn't get turned on until sometime in early November, I believe. I was cold for quite a while; it was a very drafty house...
11/10/00: Exchange Rate page 33
Panel 1. Lettered too small. Sometimes I still do that...
Panel 3. Skip is an idiot when it comes to love. I know I said that several times before...
Panel 6. What better way to tell a guy you care about him than hitting him in the face?
Panel 9. Suzie's line draws on the running gag of Skip's line "Are you hitting on me?" But probably no one remembered that line. Oh well.
Panel 10. First use of blue in "Mark and Jenny." I think the only time I used blue and red but no other colors. (I thought it might be a good idea--it'd show where the sweatdrops are, at least--but abandoned it.)
Panel 12. Someone pointed out that that's a lot of money for taxes, but I don't think it's entirely inaccurate either, though it probably is high.... At any rate, Skip would be in favor of HIGHER taxes, provided that means an increase in government services.
The dry erase board was a reference to NBC's election night coverage, where one anchor went a bit nuts with the dry erase board...
Panel 13. Note the girly shrug.
Panel 14. Of course, that was a reference to the projected results tables the major networks were running.
Panel 15. Ralph Nader had some liberal viewpoints that I kind of agreed with, though I know there's no way in the world we'll ever have national health care in America; people wouldn't put up with the taxes. The puzzle is, of course, a vague map of the electoral college.
Random link of the week. Ms. Dillon's artwork continues to amaze me.
11/17/00: Exchange Rate page 34
Always an interesting strategy to focus a couple pages on unpopular bad guys...
Panel 5. I guess Skip assumes Suzie values money more highly than he does.
Panel 10. No real point to that hotel reference, really, since they apparently don't get a hotel, and they actually get married pretty soon after this arc. Oh well.
Panel 11. The amazing shrinking rubble!
Panel 13. The recount, of course, is a reference to the Al Gore/George W. Bush fiasco. It doesn't age well.
Thoughts of the week. I still hate widescreen TV.
Random link of the week. Well, it WAS kind of interesting to be flipping through the news stations (I was struck by election fever, consarn it!) and do a double-take--"I think that's the Desert Storm at Castles and Coasters!"--and it was! Stuck on the track. It's a looping coaster. With only lap belts. Now I'm kinda scared to go on it; I don't know if there's any way for the brakes to activate on a loop (it was at an angle where it DID stop, but not upside-down). But if you were in a coaster without a shoulder harness and it got stuck at the top of a loop....I'm not strong enough to hold on for two minutes, let alone long enough for someone to bring help.....
Did I mention I'm afraid of heights?
12/1/00: Exchange Rate page 35
Panel 1. Get the feeling Mark's been though this before? Though in theory that means Jenny was too, but she seemed awfully worked up the first time they got arrested.....oh well....
Panel 2. I like the dollar signs above Suzie's head.
It's probably daytime by now. Somehow.
Panel 6. I think the money sack is a la the Simpsons ("But in the future, I'd prefer a nondescript briefcase to the sack with a dollar sign on it..."). But then, the kind of "Flattered, but spoken for" attitude that Mark exhibits towards Skip in panel 5 was also done repeatedly on that show...
Panel 8. I wonder if Mark really has a license for demolition, or if that was a cheap joke...
Thoughts of the week. Isn't it adorable how I used to apologize for not updating? Well, I think it is.
I did make my own bulletin board for my site, which perhaps was pretentious of me (dunno about presumptuous). But it's entertained me sometimes.
12/8/00: Exchange Rate page 36
Panel 3. Vertical lines to indicate disgust. At least, I think that's how it works in Anime.
Panel 4. Text reads "Sexy cross-dresser." I think it's poking fun at my James (from Pokémon) obsession.
Panel 7. I'm sure I wrote about this elsewhere, but I can't for the life of me find it anywheremaybe just because I didn't name names or something... Chris Muse astutely picked up on my hints that Carson was going to steal Maria away and lead to Mark's being miserable. I figured that if it was that obvious, I probably needed to change it anyway. Plus I like Mark and don't want him to be miserable. ^_^
Panel 10. That whole scene might be confusing. Maria's breaking it off with Carson, who apparently isn't too surprised about that. But he'd rather she wait until Dr. Schlagel's not around; he wants a good excuse not to have to go out with her.
12/15/00: Exchange Rate page 37
Panel 2. Proof that Mark DOES have an ear under his strangely parted hair.
Panel 5. I love when characters carry around random items and produce them conveniently.
Panel 8. I'm not even sure if that's the right word; "state legislature" probably would've been more appropriate. Oh well.
Panel 10. Dr. Schlagel is far too old for Carson. (Well, since it's socially acceptable for older men to marry younger women, I think it's hypocritical to say that Dr. Schlagel's too old for Carson. But I hate to see a young woman with an old man (like what happens in every action film ever made), so I guess I can say that. ^_^;)
Panel 2. Who is Becky, you may ask? Jenny's extremely kind and loving and never seen (so far, anyway) older (?) sister. I think it's kind of a Slayers thing, where Lina Inverse's sister's so strong that Lina's scared of her--even though the audience never ever sees her...
(Which is not to say I'm a fan of Slayers. I neither hate nor or love the series. ^_^)
Panel 4. Pulling a salad out of nowhere is fun.
Panel 8. First appearance of Chrissy. I think I wanted another girl in the series. Plus I wanted Jenny to have a family, since most people do.
First page in color....interesting lettering job too...
Panel 5. What's really sad is that I took an amusing Psychology 101 course well after writing this page, and I still don't know any better psychological terms for Dr. Dora. One of the reasons she's inept.
Panel 7. Witness Carson's swift transition from "I'm not ready to be set up with someone else; my heart was broken" to "She's cute."
Panel 11. Still, Chrissy is extremely astute. And mean.
Panel 12. Carson is crying.
Panel 13. He's saying "Help," not "Held." I assume.
Random links of the week. Someday I will do a 24-hour comic, really.....
And with that I end this year's commentary. Click here to go on to next month's--but the best idea of all would probably be to at least go to the next comic page to look at it before you read the commentary. ^_^
--Julie
3.23.02