I was wondering what I’d written in the first panel so I went back to my workfile and enlarged it. Here we go:

• “Peace On Earth / Purity Of Essence”, a reference to the film Dr. Strangelove
• Dark City references care of the big spiral (which says “this is the way the world works now” around it) and “YOU CAN’T GO ROUND FOREVER” underneath it
• “Hot Jon?”, yet another Look Around You reference.
• Some sort of drawings based on vaguely occult-y symbols and what looks like it might be a representation of a heart rate monitor.
• 2+2+2+2…on until 20.
• The entire right-hand wall is comprised of an equation I’m sure I laboriously copied from a Google Search on “big equation” or something similar. Only it ends with “=COMEDY?” afterward.

The reason I was interested is that usually I just write nonsense, and do it small and messily enough that when the comic is resized it looks like meaningful text but isn’t. I’ll scribble phrases like “don’t read this please” and what have you. Here I probably spent more time on the first panel than the entire rest of the comic put together, and I guess I’ll always wonder what motivated me to do that. [September 4, 2012]