Childish, So Very Childish

Here's a true story:

While working at the airport in Baltimore, I met a man working for The Body Shop named...well, let's not name names, shall we? He seemed a nice, normal, average sort of guy with no overly camp or overly masculine tendencies when you spoke to him in the hallway or on the employee shuttle or in line at Pizza Hut for bulb-warmed personal pizzas, just "Hi. How are you? Lovely weather. Can you believe what President Chimp is doing now?" and so on. But when you walked into TBS, it was all "Oh my God! Here! I *must* make you *over* right now or I'll just die!"

He was at the airport for less than six months when he announced he was leaving. The reason? Due to the multi-million dollar real estate business he ran on the side with his ex-boyfriend, he'd managed to come up with enough money to buy a fudge shop in Rehobeth Beach, Deleware. "I'm like a kid in a candy store!" he exclaimed on the employee shuttle that night.

Without thinking, I said, "Because you're living out every gay man's dream?"

"How do you mean?"

He had to beg me with all the charm he could muster to spit out the line I'd been thinking since I'd heard the news earlier in the day. "Because now you get to pack fudge for a living."

"Oh, aren't you clever!" he said, and continued talking about his new purchase.

At work the next day, my collegues -- and most of the other shop employees on the pier (when you're locked in together with MPs wielding M16s keeping you together, you get to be a tight-knit group) -- were surprised I'd said such a thing. "I mean, I know you better, but J. might think you're...you know...homophobic. You'd better apologize," one suggested, though more than a few conceded they'd thought of jokes along similar lines.

So I went to J. and just flat-out asked if I'd crossed a line with my joke the day before, and he just laughed. "Come on, hun!" he said. "If I can't take a joke, I am not a gay man, I'm a damn queer."

There's lots of repeated elements from between panels here, if anyone would like a stick with which to beat me.
Yes, repeated parts. The focus of the script is clearly on Halifax's reaction, here: I'm willing to bet at least half the people who read this comic didn't even realise I'd just duplicated the images until I pointed it out.
This is one of the strips where in a couple of places I was much happier with my initial sketches than I was with the finished result; but only on Halifax's face on the second and third panel. It was a lot clearer on the sketches that he was laughing, whereas here it's slightly questionable as to whether he's laughing or stifling a yawn or is completely shocked by frank admissions of life on the managerial front of a chocolate shop.

I think this is one of Mary's better scripts yet, helped rather than hindered by my edict of 'write more than about thirty words a panel and I'll brain you' and made wonderful by the depths of her filthy mind, which she likes to pretend is pure and clean and full of Ladies things like kittens and flowers and lace and bunny rabbits n shit.

In other news, Mary is starting a new job on Monday, so please wish her well with that. We'll try to get back to a regular updating schedule when we can -- things have been a little hectic recently, and I'm juggling art chores on this comic with a couple of other projects, plus trying to snatch a few minutes here and there to work on scripts for my upcoming solo projects (including The Magnificent Five!).
Plus, y'know, I'm a born slacker and I love to procrastinate, so that doesn't help matters.