In panel 1, note the wee detail of Ninjette’s shorts sporting a loop at the waistband to carry a bo shuriken—that is, a long, skinny, stick-like form of shuriken, as opposed to the wheel-like version visible on her hip. (Alas, folks seem to confuse blade-patterned bo shuriken like this one with the vaguely similar-looking kunai, a much larger ninja digging tool popularized as a thrown weapon in Naruto.) Not quite sure why I stopped drawing this particular feature of her outfit, given that its notable lack of bagginess offers few opportunities for carrying or concealing very many weapons.

Panel 3’s reference to “DDR”—a.k.a. Dance Dance Revolution, the once-popular videogame—is not aging all that gracefully, given that I’m fairly sure that the current generation of consoles no longer support a version of the game. Then again, I wouldn’t really know for certain; I long ago stopped keeping up with contemporary videogames, which would be the proverbial “devil’s candy” for an artist as easily distracted as I am. The choice, for me, is stark: Either get more comic pages written and drawn, or plow through Fallout 4 or Destiny or whichever nightmarish timesuck of a game is ravaging my Twitter feed this week.

Anyhoo, at the time I wrote this page, Dance Dance Revolution was still one of my key forms of cardio. (I recommend that you not contemplate the unpleasant image of an aging, sweaty,  ponytailed oaf like myself grimly pounding away at the ol’ dance pad whilst J-Pop blares.) Nowadays, wilderness hikes and snowshoeing provide the bulk of my cardio, with the rest supplied by time on my treadmill and its improvised tabletop—which, in fact, is where I’m presently writing this commentary, at 3.5 mph. (Any faster, and my already error-prone typing deteriorates horrifically.) Gotta admit, I often resent the valuable worktime lost to exercise, but I see no alternative, given the otherwise completely sedentary nature of my lifestyle. Come to think of it, back when I was working on this page, I was roughly 50 pounds heavier and working on a nice case of prediabetes. Gotta rock that cardio and free weights, artists!