247 “I Adore My Sexy Whore”

This is one of those ARPA strips that if you didn’t own a Commodore 64, you had no clue what was going on. THe first panel directly references the game “Law of the West”, the second panel “Impossible Mission”, the third panel a C64 command you could use to change the background color (I used the correct green for this, eyedropped from a Commodore 64 screenshot — yes, I was this freaking precise), and the last panel the Fastload cartridge that was supposed to speed up your floppy disk loading time. It was probably funny for me and a few other people, but a lot of people were lost. It was really fun to draw. The title itself is a reference to the Commodore slogan “I Adore My 64”. Like all ARPA-01 strips based on Commodore 64 games and programs, the dialogue is genuine and ripped word-for-word from the games.

There are some other nods in the comic too. The second last panel has a Don Johnson “Miami Vice” thing going on. The other person with the baseball cap was supposed to wear a t-shirt saying “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” but it never made it past the pencilling stage (you can see the pencils below). The last panel has a rendering of my old roommate Ralf, who also appeared in the Heart Made of Glass comic.