As usual, Helen's good side isn't all that good, and may in fact be worse than her evil side. I'm glad she's looking out for my interests, though. I wish I'd drawn Helen cuter in these panels. At least Evil Side looks hot.

For a while I toyed with the idea of Helen avoiding a romantic relationship with Dave simply because he was her henchman, but it ended up being more complicated than that.

I really like Dave's pause in the first panel. He's learned.

The island scenery is actually pretty good in this strip. Looks kind of like "Lost." The lettering's even more terrible than usual, though. It's hard to cram all those words into a panel.

Some nice poses here. I really make an effort to give characters distinctive body language, which can be hard with my limited art skills. The poses in the last panel, though, are so distinctively Dave and Helen that it almost makes up for the draftmanship not being very good otherwise. Like Rob Liefeld, I keep finding ways to angle the shots so I don't have to draw feet.

Oh, Feral Mell. One of my best ideas. Dirk Tiede later drew an awesome pinup of her.

All of Feral Mell's vocabulary comes from place names in the personal mythology of New York City street performer S.K. Thoth. My friend Joan and I saw Thoth performing in Central Park once and became kind of obsessed with him, to the point that I wrote him into a short story. It was therefore startling to see a short film based on his life win the Oscar a few years later. And he was there! On the red carpet! The loincloth of Thoth was flapping in the breeze.

I ordered the documentary, which is excellent, from Thoth's website. He sent the video and a small stone, both of which I still have.

The only really good part of this strip is the phrase "atavistic jungle woman," which I still think has a nice ring to it. Also Mell's sulky expression in the second panel. Oh, and Mell gnawing on Dave's arm. In fact, strike that. This strip is awesome.

Just as the writer of the strip, I'm less amused by funny lines than by lines that are perfectly in character, and, "Oh, poo. They've landed," is such a very Helen thing to say. The rest of the strip is just a lame excuse to get Dave beaten up, which is in character for Dave.