Mad Lab
I had so much fun with this one. I love “the lab” and the notion of potions bubbling away with transformations (a la Jekyll & Hyde) and electronic gizmos everywhere.
Making coffee is an exact science. It’s all about the right proportions of crushed coffee beans to water… milk, soy, or half and half to coffee…. sugar to, well… you get it.
I just loved this one when I first saw it on first friday!
The whole “mad scientist” and “expiraments in the lab”thing is great! How about a jolt from my electrodes? All this expiramenting is making me hungry. Oh well, off to work I go!
š I’m normally in the camp of juuuust enough cream to lighten my coffee a shade, but for the holidays I’ve been converted into the camp of a good splot (again, a highly scientific measurement) of egg nog for my first cup of the day. Brewed forever in a french press, with tasty fair trade beans. Ooooohhhh Yeaaaahhhh.
The only thing missing is Jagers lurking in the background. I trust the coffee itself was made by Agatha?
It’s cool that you were able to get surrealistic with this one. I love the background lab detail. I bet you had fun with this. I love the gradatied colors on the backgrounds in panels 1 and 3.
I’m thinking that the graduated colors in all of the panels rock. Only with as long as Randie’s taking, she must be perfecting her recipe for an “iced coffee.”
The detail that cracks me up is the honey bear dispenser among all the mad scientist tubes, beakers, flasks and whathaveyou’s.
She sure’s gotta be into her java. I’m out of town, plopped down on a big leather chair with my feet on top of a mini table, laptop on my lap, mouse pad on the chair arms to the side and linked to my Safeway-Starbuck’s wifi. My order, this morn’in? “A medium Pikes and a scone.” I always chuckle when they ask if I need room for cream. My consistent reply, “no, thank you.”
The only proper additive for coffee is Irish whiskey and that seldom and in moderation.
Oh, come now. Frederic March didn’t turn into a psychotic neanderthal because his coffee had a tad too much cream in it!
It looks like a LOT of work went into those backgrounds (not just drawing every little detail, but also coloring it just right). Most cartoonists tend to shirk drawing backgrounds, because it’s not as fun as drawing the characters, but you’ve gone the extra mile to make this work. Hooray for Brig!
Might be my favorite Squid ever…and thanks for the sneak peek at First Friday! (And see, no one even mentioned the herringbone.)
Thanks for the kudos. I had lots of fun with it despite the excessively long time it took to complete.
I’m of the sort that does cream and honey… french press preferred.
Yah, EofO… I guess the perfectionist in me went nutty over the herringbone. All is well.
Cy… eggnog? whoa…
Ow, my eyeballs!
There seems to be something written on the large glass jar in the background.
Anyone able to make that out?
Any pot of regular joe can be improved by:
1.) Pressing down the coffee grounds in the filter before brewing.
2.) Adding the SMALLEST amount of salt to the coffee. We’re talking so little salt you can count the grains.
3.) Preheating BOTH the coffee pot and your coffee cup. Coffee is very sensitive to temperature changes.
Finally – and this doesn’t go over well with people – drink your coffee black. My wife got me a coffee mug that sums it up perfectly: “Those of real character drink their coffee black.”
*hehe* The first three are actual tips; drinking coffee black is a preference.
I’m with Pete on this one. Black as midnight is the only way to drink coffee. Adding anything turns it into “not-coffee”, just another flavored beverage. And while I know and use the first 2 tips, I’ve never heard of the third. I’ll have to try that sometime.
stick…. “Bwains” and “Italian Roast”
Pete… very good coffee hints. I’ve never heard about the salt. Ryan agrees with you about the black coffee. Randie, however, begs to differ…. as do I. To each their own.
brig… Ha. Those are both funny, what with it being a mad scientist lab and all. I used a loupe (one of those printed-image magnifier thingamajigs) and made out what looked like La Pavoni among all the Sunday Herald paper’s colored dots in your comic. Wow, turns out that the big urn’s brand is that of a French coffee mak’in company. Who would’a guessed? Smile. Mystery solved, eyes relieved.
Whoops. La Pavoni’s are Italian. Figured as much, only had a very slow hook-up and no time to spare earlier. Italian or French, that big ol’ drum’s gotta hold a whole lotta joe.
woo! Doctor Horible costume!