At this point, Helen seems to find Madblood's arrogance more amusing than anything else. Madblood, for his part, is not at all bothered by the fact that his last interaction with Helen involved her minions blowing up his moonbase. Ah, mad love. Or mad infatuation. Whatever's going on here.

I like that Von Boom recipients get a nice plaque. It's so agreeably mundane.

I wrote this one at the last minute just to advance the plot, and I wasn't crazy about it at the time. Looking at it now, though, it's pretty good, because, hey, Artie in a little reindeer costume. Poor Artie. His only consolation through this indignity is that he won't be so cute in a little reindeer costume later in Narbonic.

Wait, no, yes he will. Never mind.

This strip was based on Andrew's childhood crush on Penny from "Inspector Gadget." He also liked Jerrica Benton from "Jem and the Holograms," but when she was Jerrica, not so much when she was Jem. Meanwhile, I kind of had a thing for Donatello from "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." The episode where Irma (who looks like me) had to pose as Donatello for a science conference because he'd published his research under the name "Donna Tello," and they had to work together to stop the Foot from destroying the conference, was pretty much my perfect episode. Have I mentioned this before? Because it's a big part of my formative years.

For those of you interested enough to read the filename story, Madblood is the newly-mad teenager pulled out of the wreckage in Winter's flashback. He had this whole Oedipal thing involving his dad. Probably seems very trite to him in retrospect.

I debated for a while about what beer has the funniest name. Andrew voted for Yuengling. Really, though, the funniest part of this strip is Helen referring to Titus as Dave's "new little friend."

Helen looks unhappy and distracted throughout this strip. As will be explained in the next two installments, her conversation with Madblood discombobulated her.

Obviously, whenever Helen is ready to open up emotionally, Dave is distracted by something else, and vice versa. This will continue until it ceases to be amusing.

Man, I put myself in a lot of situations where I have to draw hotel interiors. The same thing's happening in Skin Horse right now. I don't know why I do that. It's no fun at all. Though that painting in the first panel is kind of nice.

I felt the time had come to broach the question of what Helen thinks her relationship with Madblood actually is. And here it is. This is probably the closest to a straight answer you could hope to get out of Helen.

Dave is surprisingly perceptive here, and I like him rolling his eyes at Helen's nonsense in the last panel. At this point he's more mature about love than she is, which is an interesting development. Or maybe he's always been this way. Helen's kind of backward.