We saw in issue 1 that The Mayor was able to stop & convert Mal with a voice activated command. It wasn’t brought up after (even when the duo escaped – maybe they were too far away from the chasing humans?) but then two pages ago, Mal brought it up with that bureaucrat in charge of the Reset organization. Here, he wants to see if Dee responds. Checkov’s…programming.

CHMOD 755 or Change Mode 755 or “rwx r-x r-x” allows files on servers to be editable by the user and viewable by others. I don’t know the exact reasoning (755 is the numeric translation of “rwx r-x r-x”). (Go ahead and explain further in the comments if you know all about this.) This was a big deal to my 18 year old brain when someone showed me how to use it to make images appear on my MOSAIC internet browser. Does that tell you how old I am? Huge deal for me. Oh, if only I were making comic strips in 1994, I could share them with people with THE INTERNET! Having a very basic understanding of these things has helped me a lot even though I’m not a programmer or web designer.

Another thing I did, as I was inking all four strips at once, was change the POV in this strip to Mal & Dee’s reflection in the TV. Otherwise you’d be looking at the backs of their heads from behind the couch in three panels. I could have copied and pasted that image for the whole thing. I thought I should change it up and then I could draw this video game a little bit. (I pencilled Dee drinking and holding a glass – this was more fun.) oops, I didn’t put in the zipatone in Dee’s chest. To fix later!

Anyway, here’s this week’s strips. Mal & Dee will embark on a new adventure with #34… but I might do a couple Mort Inkingbot comic strips before then.