Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

Maurice is checking out the stock of arm braces. He holds one up to his extended right arm and muses, "This one might fit."

"Are you getting a back brace too?" Jon asks, standing next to him on crutches. "You should, or else you're going to throw it out again and again."

"I don't have the money," Maurice says.

"So you're going to suffer through?" Jon asks. "Will that save you money?"

"Fine, I'll get a little one," Maurice says, perusing the store shelves once more. He notices Jon wander off. "Whatcha looking at?"

Pardon my bad rendering of Jon here. I said at the beginning that I'd take care and never be sloppy about drawing him, because he has a different center of balance than us non-crutch-using people, and it's not always intuitive to find it. But that was before I started a daily webcomic! "Just browsing," Jon says.

Maurice starts browsing too, and lights up in excitement. "Is that The Clapper? Hah!"

"Yeah, haha!" Jon laughs along with him. "They carry all sorts of dumb things here."

"Wait..." says Maurice. "This is a medical supply store. So the Clapper is a medical supply."

"No shit, Sherlock," Jon replies icily.

***

In 1990, we were all used to being inundated with infomercials, and we mocked them and joked about them, and most of us didn't give them any real thought beyond that. The Clapper at least had a very old lady in the ad. Those ads rarely had content indicating their target audience, and that's because the philosophy is that if you market to wealthy, young, pretty people, the rest of your clientele will fall in line behind them. And back in 1990, we didn't think about every demographic all the time. It was definitely a societal weakness of the time.

The Snuggie turned that awareness around, but the Snuggie was introduced in 2006 or so, so that means Maurice is actually well ahead of the curve.

Cathy with a licensed character

Life is tough all over. A friend is having a particularly difficult stretch, so to cheer her up, I offered to draw her something silly with a character of her choice and a character of my choice.

I always choose Cathy. For one thing, I own the rights to her, so that's easy. And she comes out of my pencil easily, now that I've drawn her at least a thousand times. (I'm counting previous drafts of Alien Romance, plus my rough draft of the hypothetical sequel, plus all the many, many times I drew her for prompts or just because.)

She's very versatile, too. With her wide eyes and unruly hair, and big ears that look like they're ready to go flying off somewhere, plus a fashion sense that favors scribbles and flares, she always looks a little bit lost. She doesn't belong anywhere; therefore she belongs equally well everywhere. The Silly Old Bear seems like a good enough fit.