Original Commentary

Yesterday's comic may have been Richard and Sinclair's first appearance in You Say it First- it was not, however, their first appearance in a comic. The two were once singing comedians from the Minerva theatre. Once the theatre closed there really wasn't very much need for singing comedians on Hippedown. Singing marketing people, however, are always high in demand. -Isabel

Modern Commentary
Kimberly's line in the bottom half of the second panel was originally "I wouldn't make as much money as I would if I was selling my own things", which is honestly a better line. More accurate. It's not about the total profit margin. It's about how much Kimberly personally takes home. - Terrence

Original Commentary

What did you expect Kimberly to do when confronted with low impact sales techniques? You can be certain that Ms. Taylor didn't order that tape. And Richard & Sinclair are named after Richard Sinclair, of Caravan (and several other Canterbury psych-prog bands). If you know who Gentle Giant and The Soft Machine are, you'd probably like Caravan.

Modern Commentary
Richard and Sinclair finally got lunch!

There's no particular symbolism to their name. They're not based on Richard Sinclair. Just named after him because it amused me. If you don't listen to Caravan (or Camel or Hatfield and the North) you're not missing out on a hidden facet of things. - Terrence

Original Commentary

I'm glad Kimberly has a job again. It was depressing when she was out of work. It always seems like the comic imitates life or life imitates the comic, and I'm happier when everybody has a job -Isabel

Modern Commentary
We don't know how much one unit is, in the fragrance compound business. Considering Kimberly is on her first day, she doesn't know either. Neither does the guy at Benlay Industries.

I mean, 1 unit is 100 bottles apparently. But how big are those bottles? Did that guy just order enough to fill a small swimming pool?
I hope that Kimberly ends up renting him space to store all those chemicals, then - after a year - buying them back from him at a discount. That way she gets paid three times for this.

We had, later, mentioned the fragrances being stored in larger druns. I think that that's more correct if folks are using these in industrial quantities. We don't actually know for sure how this business works, but hopefully it's plausible enough that it doesn't disturb the readers. Perhaps some folks who work in the industrial fragrance business find the comic amusing for the wrong reasons. - Terrence

Original Commentary

When I started this comic I only had a rough idea about just what I was going to do with it... over the day the slab of marble which was the idea for the comic slowly got chiseled into what we have here. I wrote out the script after I drew today's comic. -Isabel

Modern Commentary
Of courses Brisbane wants to do something fun that costs money. With the occasional exception - like that date night in the park - that's how a lot of their dates came about. Kimberly isn't much for spending money on herself, especially when she (allegedly) doesn't have a job.

Not having a set schedule, Kimberly has been keeping weird hours, hence the afternoon nap. - Terrence

Original Commentary

You Say it First:I broke one of my major rules in today's comic. The "write each comic as if it is someone's first time to the comic and have no idea what is going on or who the people in the comic are" rule. It's a big rule that got broken... but sometimes rules are made to be broken. Hopefully if today's comic WAS someone's first visit to the comic, they'll use the 'back' button to try and get it.-Isabel

Modern Commentary
Birds! We don't see many birds in You Say it First. Peter shows up at the beginning and during Minervacon in Year Six but that's pretty much it.
Isabel didn't feel she did them justice and preferred drawing other types of characters.

Also, Brisbane's tastes tend to run towards weird artsy movies which can indeed be that boring. - Terrence

Original Commentary

The movie with the birds that Brisbane is talking about? Winged Migration. It's a movie that features birds flying around. It's beautifully filmed, but there's no narration. No plot. Just birds flying around. It'd be a great movie to sleep through, except for the parts with the seagulls. And Brisbane describes movies about the same way he tells jokes. It's actually a pretty funny scene but he forgot to tell you the actual punchline - Terrence

Modern Commentary
Occasionally, Isabel asks me how something ended. And I read her a summary of the last episode and it makes no sense because we have no context for anything and don't know who half the characters are.

But there's a difference between the kind of movie that Brisbane would want to share with Kimberly and the kind of movie that he'd watch on its own.

So, that movie that Brisbane would've seen - is that about non-anthropomorphic birds flying around or just bird-people doing...some kind of arthouse movie thing? No idea.
I'm not sure Brisbane knows either. He hasn't seen that movie yet. - Terrence