There is actually a lot going on in this strip. The “fine mess” comment in the first panel is a tribute to the comic greats Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The “Exposition!” text box is something that I always imagine whenever someone in a movie or TV show recaps the current plotline for no reason other than to catch up the audience. Finally, in case you were wondering, the yellow text box is me.
“Bring my wrath upon you” is classic comic book dialogue.
The yellow text box is how Chris Doyle puts in his own dialogue in the Reasonably Clever comic. Since he’s the creator of Whiskey and Scotch, who I’ve been borrowing for the past couple of months, I thought he might appreciate seeing “himself” in the S-Team comic too.
Mr. Fluffernutter’s list is modeled after the list of ways to cook shrimp by Bubba from Forrest Gump. The “Frog, eggs, sausage, and frog” is from Monty Python’s SPAM skit (“spam, eggs, sausage and spam”).
Somehow I completely missed the change in font size in the speech bubbles all the way through production. Like publishing a book with an error that sneaked through multiple edits, though, the error jumps out at me right away once it’s available for the entire world to see.
Blackmail! Blackmail! Blackmail!