Oh dear.

I’ve honestly been working on this comic all day. Sure, there have been breaks to do work-work and run around the block, but basically it’s been me, a fresh set of weekly NPR podcasts, a new boxed set of “My So-Called Life” and this comic for my entire life to date. I guess it is a pretty long one, even without the gratuitous cheesecake diagram of fully clothed Lance.

I scripted this one way early on. In my old script notebook it comes chronologically between “Wow, they really went all out for this pirate convention” and “My love is like a red, red, red rose.” Mostly I come up with the overarching storylines ahead of time and the day-by-day scripts in a batch or two toward the beginning of that storyline, but this one came to me very quickly after I knew I was going to be using Henry Higgins and Carole Pickering… probably because most of it had already been written a hundred years earlier by George Bernard Shaw (except for the part written by George Lucas). Nowadays I keep my scripts in my email drafts, so maybe once I delete this one, gmail will stop giving me ads for Yoda costumes.

In the final panel, Lance and Eskimo are hanging out at Jeria’s–hence the couch and TV and cups and soda and magazines and toy snakes, things they don’t have down in the basement. I guess Lance is watching Robbie. It’s nighttime (Krys and Phil have already starting painting the town), so she must have already gone to bed. I suppose Lance doesn’t expect Carole until late. Eskimo doesn’t like babysitting but she doesn’t mind keeping Lance company in a nice house, especially if she needs to get her mind off of waiting.

I agonized a bit about which show Eskimo would want to watch that Lance wouldn’t. Originally it was “Lazy Town,” a show that original L&E co-developer Alison enjoys much more than I do, but that didn’t air in the U.S. until 2004. “Saddle Club” debuted in 2001, the current in-comic year. Probably Eskimo admires equestriennes.

HIGGINS: I can see you now, Mrs. Lance Redcloud, in a wretched little flat above a store. Why, the poor devil couldn’t get a job as an errand boy.
PICKERING: I don’t want him to work. I’ll support him on my teacher’s salary.
HIGGINS: A teacher! Oh, Pickering, you could have been a legend in the field. Very well, if that’s what you want–a sentimental hog with a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.
PICKERING: He loves me.
HIGGINS: Said that, did he? You are aware that he doesn’t give a damn about your mind. Your soul. He only wants your body.
PICKERING: So? I’d rather have a boyfriend who’s attracted to me than one who isn’t!HIGGINS: Who says I’m not!
[surprised pause]
HIGGINS: …It occurs to me that you may not be referring to me.
PICKERING: Who says I’m not.
[they kiss]
cut to
LANCE (snapping awake): Do you ever get the sense like millions of voices just cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced?
ESKIMO: All right, all right, I switched to “Saddle Club”… I thought you were asleep!