Original Commentary

I'm just adoring Kimberly's "gimmie" look in the last panel... which pretty much sums up Kimberly and her mother's relationship. They only ever come to each other when they need something (of course, Miz Taylor needs very little from her daughter, being a tough old broad herself). The comical look may not have been what Terrence was going for, but every once in a while us artist need to flagrantly abuse our writers.

Useless fact: Its my goal for Miz Taylor to be the character with the most types of hair styles in any one series... so far so good. -Isabel

Modern Commentary
Yeah, I'm not sure there's physical stock certificates to hand over. Kimberly isn't sure either.

Also, I fully support the staging in the last panel there. With a lot of these comics, I provided very little in the way of stage directions. - Terrence

Original Commentary

You Say it First needs more hand waggling, seriously. It makes Miz Taylor look more like she's scolding a little girl, rather than a woman, but I'm getting ahead of myself.-Isabel

Why hasn't she heard from Mr. Thompson lately? Guess who's been screening Ms. Taylor's calls, too. Brisbane doesn't like giving her messages that get her angry. And yes, in the original drafts, Dan had conspirators. I cut them when I realized the didn't have anything to do. Anyhow, Ms. Taylor is a lot more animated than Dan is, so there's less of a talking head issue - Terrence

Modern Commentary
I kinda wish I had done more to set upp Brisbane's role in all this. He's kind of accidentally set himself up as the information filter so that the bits of the company that don't get along aren't in contact with each other.

On the other hand, I'm afraid Brisbane would have ended up borrowing more from Catch-22's ex-PFC Wintergreen than I would have liked - Terrence

Original Commentary

This is about the third time Ms. Taylor has blamed herself for Kimberly's actions. She has this coming for a long time. I could've moved all the dialogue forward half a panel, but I really wanted Ms. Taylor's last line to be the last line. I've been trying to get a little more cliffhangery at the end each comic - Terrence

Modern Commentary
Is that a reasonable amount of money for a 5% interest in a company of this size? How big is the company?

I think we decided on around 50-70 people working there, but admittedly Lemon Technology sometimes seems like a larger company.

It's a low offer upon reflection. The company, as a whole, is worth more than $400,000. If you had offered Ms Taylor $60,000 for her stake in the company, she definitely would not accept it. However, that's still a fairly decent amount of cash - Terrence

Original Commentary

This has been the happiest I've been with my work on this arc thus far (well, even since last week).

The building being the most expensive thing the company owns has been a point Terrence has been mentioning a lot to me since we started talking about this arc. I personally don't think that $20,000 is enough, I asked Terrence if he could make it more, but he won't budge. Come on, Kimberly- hold out! We both know you can do better. -Isabel

Well, she owns 5%, so that's make the total valuation around $400,000. That seems more-or-less right. We're limited by the amount of money Ms. Taylor can draw upon. If they were liquidating the company, that'd be different. But they aren't. And the fact that she's her mother's sole heir is something of a factor too.

Or, as importantly, the amount is "you can do a lot of things" money, not "you can retire" or "you're rich" money. I could've had the company be worth twenty times as much, but Kimberly would've reacted very differently to being offered a half a million dollars - Terrence

Modern Commentary
I'm glad past-Isabel and current-Terrence agree that the amount is low.

But that doesn't mean Ms. Taylor wouldn't offer that much...

Also, it's a plot point later that they don't actually own the building; they've got a very long-term lease - Terrence

Original Commentary

It is currently Thursday, for those keeping score. When I was writing this, I thought it was Wednesday, but...
Monday: Kimberly comes home angry, talks to Lola about crocheting
Tuesday: Brisbane stays home sick, Ms. Taylor sends out the memos
Wednesday: Dan talks to Kimberly. Brisbane tries to talk to Kimberly
Thursday: Kimberly talks to Dan and her mother
So apparently the meeting is tomorrow! I better get a move on! - Terrence

Modern Commentary
In future storylines, I paid a lot more attention to the time. Mainly because I was afraid someone would call me out for having them work for ten days straight or something.- Terrence