©2007 by Peter Bernhardt. All rights reserved.

Author's Notes:

Oh man, that kid cracks me up... you know, "the kid" is one of the first characters that I decided that I definitely wanted to have on board my ship when I started designing the crew for Seaworthy. I can't remember what order he came in after people like the Captain and Bellfont, but I know I thought of him in the first brainstorming session, so very early on. So, obviously, I have been meaning to introduce the little bugger for some time (about 10.5 months, to be precise). But the time was never right, so he stayed on the shelf. Then I finally decided just to introduce him because, hey, why the hell wouldn't the time be right in a comic series that really shows very little in the way of structure and continuity? Plus I needed to de-abstractize (writers are allowed to invent words) my mental image of him for this moment. There you go. The kid is an exciting character. He really gets the plot moving along. He is witty and clever. He is a complex character that we will have a good time developing. And I'm sure you can tell all of this from the two lines that he's had so far (one about pissing and one about boobs).

While we're on that topic, I believe there have been a fair number of you out there calling for more Tess: YOWZA!

I said this last week, but this week's comic really will be the last one I do on the old computer before my laptop gets fixed. I finally managed to convince Dell to honor my warranty and replace my crippled hard drive, but not before I jumped through all of the hoops that they had me navigate. It was a pain, but that era is coming to an end. The bright side of it all is that, while I lost a great deal of valuable data in this fiasco, I also will be losing all of the spyware that was making my laptop run like a 386! Always look on the bright side, otherwise you might cry! All I can say is that it will be very nice to be able to surf the web on the toilet again.