Marooned Classics: #21

At this point in the strip, we had entered into the “Story Rock” story, where John was supposed to justify his landing on Mars to the Geborga. (It was later insinuated by Ugo that this was merely a cover to see if John and/or Asimov were carrying the time-altering device they had tracked – later found out to be the Time Cube held by Bob).

Asimov had claimed John was chosen because he was flawed. And John comes right back at Asimov, pointing out what seems to be an obvious mistake in his robot design. Unfortunately, John knows little about Weeble Power Gyros.

This was really the first strip that got a lot of positive feedback from readers. A fair amount of people who were old enough to remember Weebles got a kick out of it. And generally any time Asimov gets the best of John, or shoots him a zinger, it’s a good thing. Notice here that John refers back to Asimov’s origin as a mobile garbage can receptacle. He can’t resist bringing that up whenever possible to humiliate his sarcastic companion.

I recolored and added light and shadows to this one, and brightened up the colors on the music notes. I also streamlined the text just a bit. At this time I was still prone to be a bit too wordy.

The 3rd panel drawing of John is awful. I tried to fix it a little bit, his head was all squished and narrow and he is just standing at a very odd angle. I think he would actually be looking past Asimov’s left side instead of at him.

But I think this is a picture of John and Asimov at their best, having a tit for tat argument with one of them coming out with the “winning” shot in the end.

View the original strip