Also one of my first cartoons. I went to the art store and discovered Zipatone. See, I'm getting better. I thought the watermelon was a good idea.

I still can't draw. And I can't write punchlines. And I don't know what a raised, pointed hand looks like. So sue me.

Scott Adams, the guy who does Dilbert, says there are six dimensions to humor: relevance, cuteness, naughtiness, bizarre, juxtaposition, and cleverness. Every good cartoon has at least two of these dimensions. This comes from the set of ideas where I discovered, to my surprise, that people think "bizarre" is much funnier than "clever".

. In the first frame, at the far left, on the edge of the couch, is something hard to make out. It was supposed to be a dimunitive hairless anteater. For some reason, when I was first writing cartoons, I thought hiding diminutive hairless anteaters in every cartoon would be funny and very deep. The idea never went anywhere, and I soon forgot about it

the amazing shrinking signpost

This came from Sparky and Doug harassing Nina Koros. Nina eventually

married Sparky

Years after I wrote this I met someone from New Zealand. They complained that everyone in the western world uses New Zealand as their favorite middle-of-nowhere.