Original Commentary

The alternate punch line was "All she'd say is that it was on Pay Per View", but that wasn't the right direction to take things. "Our landlord gave my homework." was originally a punch line in another strip, but I had trouble putting two panels in front of it, and didn't want to re-tell Saturday's joke - Terrence

Modern Commentary
I mean, Lola wasn't always a little old lady. Back in the day, she probably could throw a guy down and pin his shoulders to the mat a few times.

But we did have a later storyline about Lola being a manager or valet for her dad. So she might have appeared on a real Pay Per View. - Terrence

Original Commentary

I lurk on Slashdot. There are two types of discussions there. There's topics that seems kinda interesting but only gets 30 comments. Then there's the topics that get 300 comments, but 270 of them are about welfare or evolution. So, yeah. For any messageboard there's the stuff that the board's about, and there's the stuff people come there to talk about. On a really good board, they overlap - Terrence

Modern Commentary
Seriously, any online community of size needs at least a little guidance so it doesn't go feral because you've got a small but vocal group of people who just won't shut up about their pet topic.

I'm not sure how I got to "Brisbane suggests that Lola create her own site". That's kinda out of nowhere and doesn't make a lot of sense. But back then, you could just spin up your own messageboard if you wanted to. - Terrence

Original Commentary

Why is Kimberly explaining this to Brisbane? Because if Lola explained it, she'd call it a promotion instead of a company and then I'd have to explain what a promotion is. Are there wrestlers who switched to a competing company but kept the same gimmick? I'm not really sure. Probably at least once - Terrence

Modern Commentary
As I've mentioned, I hadn't watched wrestling in a decade or so when I wrote this, but it's heavily inspired by the book The Death of WCW which details one of the ways a wrestling company can collapse.

Some will tell you that there are a lot of ways a wrestling company can die. Most of those ways boil down to "The audience lost interest and they didn't make a lot of money", but WCW was special. For a while, they were the top-rated wrestling promotion and had an unlimited budget courtesy of Ted Turner. Then suddenly they didn't. - Terrence

Original Commentary

Yes, it's a fourth-wall gag. This was the most difficult comic to write because I wanted to make it obvious without being too obvious. The punchlines went through several variations to make the "vaudeville singer in an office environment" gimmick more obvious (as opposed to just Richard and Sinclair being strange) - Terrence

Modern Commentary
Honestly, wrestling is inherently ridiculous. There's no point pretending it isn't, so why not lean into the ridiculousness?

You should have vampires and zombies and yetis and sea monsters. The sport is richer for their presence.

That's why one of our favorite promotions is Mystery Wrestling, where the longest-running feud is Sasquatch vs Franklin Meyer the hot dog guy. - Terrence

Original Commentary

Did you ever come up with something so awesome you had to use it? That's why it's called the Anti-Frankenstein Equation. The name "Tertanium" is lifted from Radio Free Vestibule's "Something's Wrong with Gilligan's Island". I was very tempted to rename him to something even more obscure. I didn't because the alternatives were worse. I've been meaning to work a Robyn Hitchcock reference in for a while so he was almost Dr. Sticky. Except that sounds even wronger as a wrestler. And yes, the vampire is part of the A-FE - Terrence

Modern Commentary
"The Anti-Frankenstein Equation" is one of those names that just amused me. There's no story. There's no explanation. I just personally think it's hilarious and will use it any chance I get. Which isn't often, since the comic isn't about wrestlers.

They did show up in Nicole and Derek a few years later, though.

Did they form to fight a Frankenstein? Maybe. If they did, that was years ago and the guy isn't a Frankenstein any more, but the team name stuck. - Terrence

Original Commentary

I had considered having Brisbane and Kimberly get into a small argument over the issue, then they both realize that neither of them have any stake in it. That didn't happen because I didn't feel like writing an argument and didn't really have space for it. So instead they talk about the nature of identity - Terrence

Modern Commentary
Eight years after this, WWE would do a series, Southpaw Regional Wrestling. It featured WWE wrestlers portraying the "talent" from a low-budget 1980s independent promotion.

Ric Flair appeared as a Paid Ric Flair Impersonator, because - and he said this specifically - this company could not afford the real Ric Flair.

What I'm trying to say here is that Kimberly is right. - Terrence