I’m not sure how this puts us “back”. Marten has always been the central character of the strip and he’s been a part of the space station story.
Yeah, I reacted hastily there.
At least Marigold didn’t puke in the guys mouth. :eek:
Okay, now for a stupid nitpicking question about this strip.
Look at Angus and Faye in the second and third panels. Angus is sitting in bed and Faye is standing, so Faye is significantly taller than Angus. Now look at the sixth panel. Angus and Faye are both now standing and Angus is significantly taller than Faye. No surprises here.
But what’s the deal with the fifth panel? In this one, Angus and Faye are eye-to-eye. So what’s their position supposed to be? Angus can’t be sitting or standing at this point.
They’re both standing on the floor, between the bed and the wall look at the lamp and the corner of the room). Faye is slouching to put her head on Angus’ chest.
Also, Jeph seriously can’t draw profiles. His 3/4 poses look awesome, his profiles stink.
Jeph also has issues with relative sizes of people. They get taller and shorter from frame to frame, and it can be confusing (like in this case) try to track who is taller than whom.
That said, I think the intent in panel 3 is that Angus is sitting up in the bed or kneeling on it, and Faye is standing on the floor, so their heights equalize. In panel 4, they’re both standing, each at normal height, Angus taller than Faye per usual.
Or something.
Hmm. In panel 4, it seems we get a glimpse of Faye’s scar from her car wreck, which was described in great detail like 1500 strips ago (the wreck, not the scar). Several characters remarked on her scar about that time, but it hasn’t been seen in the art that I’ve noticed. Nice touch, Jeph.
Faye’s going to punch you if she catches you staring at her boobs.
Cute special effect in today’s strip. You may want to linger on panel 3 for a moment before moving on to panel 4.
Could someone explain why the writing on Marigold’s shirt changes? I’m assuming it’s an anime joke.
You must have missed that when Faye put on Marigold’s glasses, everyone became an anime version of his or herself. Her shirt changed from something I can’t really read or recognize to “I love Sefirosu” (Sefirosu is the original Japanese name for the character of Sephiroth in the Final Fantasy series). It’s just part of the anime worldview of the glasses.
Okay, after a good 15 minutes of research (I hope you appreciate this, HNC (;))), it appears that the real-world shirt says “I <3 Gawwus”, which apparently means “I <3 Garrus (Vakarian)”, an alien character in the game Mass Effect. My evidence for this is that Jeph put out a tweet a while ago that basically said that “If/when we get a 2nd dog, it will be named either Shepard (so I can say his name in the Wrex voice) or Garrus (so I can call him “gawwus”)”.
The joke being, in Anime-vision, her shirt changes from a reference to an American video game, to a reference to a Japanese video game.
I got that the glasses give her anime vision, but I didn’t understand the exact reference. Thanks guys. 
ETA: I love that the guy next to them also anime-ifies. Nice touch.
To be more accurate, it’s the direct romanization of the Japanese transliteration of Sephiroth, which is always what his name was meant to be read as, as it’s a reference to a real thing. It just got rendered as ‘Sefirosu’, because of the nature of the Japanese language.
That’s what I meant. I just phrased it imprecisely.
I think Jeph drew Marigold a little perkier, too, in anime-vision.
OK, my turn – again – to not get it. What’s up with today’s strip? What are they doing, and what’s the punch line?
They’re dressing up their anthros because they think it’s cute. That’s all. (Same reason people put clothes on cats.)
I don’t think there’s really much to ‘get’…they’re dressing up Momo and Winslow (well, mostly Momo), and squeeing at how adorable they are, in a way that’s very vaguely creepy.
(They seem to be going for a Sweet Lolita look for Momo, though a very restrained one - not sure if Jeph was going for that, cheaped out on going full bore lolita, or just put her in something cute and frilly, and I’m reading into it due to my own love of Lolita fashion. I suspect one of the latter two, and given Marigold’s participation, I’d give those pretty much even money.)
I did catch the loli dress on Momo, and I thought it must be a reference to some anime thing, knowing Marigold. But I thought Marigold was a full bore yaoi fan, not a creepy (!) lolicon otaku.