This strip easily could’ve been Vachel/Dee as a rose/botanist, bunny/taxidermist, kitten/bulldog, candy/young child, etc etc. Pick something cute and harmless and find what hunts it.
But I think the net makes this choice the best. :)
The idea for this came to me when I was thinking about how kids like to bring pets home (though usually, fortunately, they’re small things like caterpillars). Alligators seemed more Dee’s speed.
And I never stopped being amused by the blurred line of animals and sapient animals. The Alligator is merely an animal, until Ted addresses him in the last panel.
I like that Ted sometimes gives himself an out and doesn’t carry all responsibility on his shoulders (and I also wonder if that it purely a whistle of “I’m pretending like i saw nothing” or if there isn’t a bit of glee in it).
I also like that Dee is just placidly doing her thing, and also that she serves tea to the teddy bear.
Ever since I began swimming as a kid, I’ve always loved how clear everything is underwater, and how surreal it is to see the bottom half of people underwater and the top half obscured by the water’s surface.
I’d say this strip was half inspired by the joke, and half inspired by me wanting simply to draw it.
I think as the strip went on that perhaps Dee lost a little bit of this surreal strong physical-gag punchline material. For better? For worse? Who knows. I have as much love for later strips. But a gag like this is lovely and wicked and all sorts of wrong.
This whole strip was about me wanting to draw the middle panel, although I like the punchline too.
I also tried to work in (through the middle panel) that they live in the woods in a somewhat rural area with towns around.
I liked this flaw in logic. Because he’s a bird, it’s easy to laugh at him for being foolish, but it’s actually not that unreasonable for him to draw this conclusion.
And stewardesses. Pure logic that every plane needs one. Who else will serve us ginger ale?
It was interesting working out the twist in this strip. The joke being that Blake is pointing out Vachel’s insensitivity, and I needed a device to show Vachel’s being so oblivious to his own insensitivity that he doesn’t see the saracasm. Missing batteries from a camcorder hit the nail on the head.
I also like that i got her swing balance just right in panel 2.