#177: Asparagus Live at the Mouse Trap

Arthur Trope Presents: The Inscrutables

No. 177

“Asparagus, Live at the Mouse Trap”

As promised, following from #162, here we have the 2nd in Artie’s aspiring franchise featuring Asparagus (“Gus”), the condescending, alt-country, culturally-insensitive cat from Cats, disparaging his previous audience in varyingly awkward attempts to ingratiate himself with his current audience. It does feature a cat, so that’s one box Artie’s checking here. But that’s about the only one. He won’t shorten the captions bc he says the rambling is the whole point & “they’re integral to the franchise”. And no one on the Committee has any viable alternatives. So we can expect to keep having this conversation. Artie told me he’s settled on a ‘one for me and one for them’ approach, like George Clooney settled into with one ‘Oceans Eleven’ for every ‘Michael Clayton’. I suppose in this plan, Artie is George & Gus is his Michael Clayton. The idea came to him while he was in Zihuatanejo watching old episodes of ‘ER’ dubbed in Spanish playing on the lobby TV. I happened to like Michael Clayton and I like this panel too. It squeaked by the Committee, (squeaked, ha), but they’re expecting an Oceans 11 at some point. It was in the 10th percentile in the S-MCSS2, which was low bc it’s long & “nuanced” according to the feedback from the free form text fields. “Nuanced” is code for “I don’t get it.” There will be more, Artie says, many more of these to come. He’s almost as excited about Gus the Cat as he is about Miss Fourth of July (M4J), which it sounds like he made good progress on in Mexico. I guess that’s what a little R&R will do for the creative mind. He submitted a bunch of sketches when he got back, so we’re backlogged, which is a rarity. So, anyway, here’s #177, which Inky was up late coloring bc Artie insists this franchise needs color. If you don’t get it, you’ve got plenty of company, so I’ll understand if you just scroll on by.... -Ed.

P.S. Hanelore had a preplanned vacation to go see family in Munich, so she’s not here the rest of the week. Which is fine w me bc I need to figure out what it means to be a “manager”, which no one here has the first clue about.