009 “The Moral Limits of Love”

The header has the first of many jokes to come of me being late with a comic. The lack of “L” in the third panel was actually done on purpose – the sound of pee hitting someone’s face wasn’t big enough for a real “SPLASH”.

When I look at the strips for Volume One versus those of Volume Three, I notice a big difference. To me, Volume One is a lot funnier. I think it’s really because I had a lot more people to bounce ideas off of than I do now. It’s akin to a stand-up comic who tests his material on his friends before going on the road. It also helped that I was closer to the people I was drawing this for – friends. Nowadays, I’m pretty isolated. I haven’t met another artist in the flesh for over a year and a half now, and its hard to be humorous living in isolation.

So back in the early days, the THIN H LINE was read mainly by people I knew personally and considered friends. I’ve seen people on BBSes brag about how they were fans from the first strip. They are not telling the truth … the first few strips were shared with friends. It did not really show any signs of being read by anyone else until at least #20.

One of my friends was a female friend. She was a person I considered my best friend at the time, and she was just as perverted in thinking as I was. We talked on the phone loads, and in many of these phone calls I got sparks for an idea for the strip. This was one. She had to go to the bathroom really bad, and she said, basically, when a woman had to go, she HAD to go. Obviously, I thought of a worst case scenario. The strip came out of that.

In the third panel, the guy is doing a typical two-finger Rumiko Takahashi sign.