Shrove Monday
This is the day of Atoning For One’s Sins, apparently by taking a 9mm to the pleural cavity. It is traditionally followed by Fat Tuesday, also know as Mardi Gras, wherein strange and occasionally macabre celebrations are held, often including dancing skeletons, demonic visages, and scantily-clad women.
Yes indeed, we carefully planned our release schedule months in advance just so that this page would be up in time for Mardi Gras.
(No, we didn’t. It is sheer happenstance, but dammit, it fits so well we’re going to take credit for it anyway.)
You may show your appreciation for our genius by sending Max pictures of your girlfriends decked out in beads and lifting their shirts.
My own tastes have changed with age. You may send me similarly-attired pictures, but of your mom. Or your girlfriend’s mom. I’m good either way.
In my one and only visit to New Orleans (I was dressed as BraveStarr, which is a story for another time) I discovered that one could purchase a dozen fresh raw oysters at almost any tavern or restaurant, for very little money. They were delicious. I walked up and down Bourbon Street, consuming a dozen oysters at every stop.
In two hours, I had ingested 120 raw oysters, enough for a lifetime. Literally; because somewhere in there, at least one snot-like mollusk had been a bit past its prime. I shall spare you the details of Salmonella enterica, except to say that my fever-induced visions were not dissimilar to what are pictured here.
And that if you think this comic is bloody, you should have seen the contents of my hotel room toilet. (Yes, I went there. You’re welcome.)
But such is the magic of New Orleans that I still consider these minor drawbacks to what was otherwise an amazingly good time.
Haven’t eaten an oyster since though.
— Bob out
Artist’s Notes: So what is it with violently shitting yourself and hellish visions? My own experience with food poisoning was not unlike what dad described above- I was coming home from a trip to New York and had a calamari dish at a shitty airport restaurant. Tasted good enough to me at the time but sure enough I was, by the next day, pooping myself so badly I had to sleep with two pairs of sweatpants on and a strategically-colored brown towel wedged between my butt cheeks. Remembering my Dad’s old story about the oysters, I called him up asking for advice on the matter. He suggested I try some Immodium AD. “That’ll stop ya up!” So I got some and, praise the lord, it worked. But it also gave me very very strange visions of dripping, undulating, tortured masses of decaying flesh. “Cool!” I thought, and popped a few more and tripped out. That provided me with a lot of inspiration of how I wanted to depict our character Max’s “deadvision.” There’s not a lot of logic to it. Its basically a hallucination… or is it? Anyway, it tends to vary a bit, based on whatever recreational drugs I was taking at the time. Don’t do drugs, kids. -Max
