058 “Babe Runner”

This strip was itself inspired by a Kikuni Masahiko strip in which two guys are stranded in the desert. In the middle of the desert there’s a juice vending machine, but they are happy to find they have enough change between them to each buy a drink. However, next to the juice vending machine is a porno book vending machine. The last panel finds them dead in the desert, pants down, with a porno book on the sand between them. (a cultural note — in Japan, drink vending machines are EVERYWHERE you can look, and yes, there are porno vending machines as well.)

I thought this was funny as sin, so I wanted to do a similar joke where someone chooses masturbation over life. I was reminded of a short Zen tale where a man enjoys eating a stawberry when he’s just about to perish — perched on a cliff there is a tiger above him and a long fall below him — and also thought of Blade Runner. I thought this would make the perfect vehicle for a reimaging of the Kikuni joke.

I had this idea on the shelf for a very long time. I drew the first panel, I even had that with me when I went to Malaysia. But I was completely underconfident of my ability to do it artistic justice. However, I did buy the DVD at this point, and was able to get the first panel just perfect. This was the first in a series of strips which used DVDs as reference for the parody strips (the Blair Witch Project strip, the Space 1999 strip, the Mrs. Shibata as Indiana Jones strip, the It’s a Wonderful Life strip, etc.).

The title of the porno being flashed on the buiding was something my friends and I had come up with when trying to find the perfect name for a porno. The last shot is an example of one of my favorite styles of punchlines, where instead of showing what happens immediately following the 3rd panel, a great deal of time passes, so you see the effects, but not the actions themselves, and the reader fills in the blanks