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No. 34: A whole mess o' Potamia

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A whole mess o' Potamia

First | Previous | 2015-09-16 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/pomh/?comic=34

Strip by: Ian Boreham

{Marty McFly and Doc Brown stand in the foreground looking bewildered. The Delorean stands in the background, doors open, being inspected by some interested-looking people of ancient middle-eastern appearance. Further back is a large ziggurat.}

Doc: Great Scott, Marty!

Doc: When I asked you to fix the time in the DeLorean...which switch did you use?

{The interior of the DeLorean. Between the steering wheel and the time travel controls is a small panel with two switches. The top one (off) is labelled "summer time". The bottom one (on) is labelled "Sumer time".

The author writes:

Sumer is icumen in, I suppose.

The idea for this strip came while I was writing some software, from some API documentation I was reading. There was a field labelled "sumer_time". I figured either the API was a lot older than I had realised, or time travel must be involved somehow.

Doc seems to use "Great Scott" as a generic exclamation of shock or realisation, but here I choose to interpret it a bit differently. I didn't quite capture the facial expression I wanted, and he came out looking a bit angry. But then it occurred to me that maybe he would be angry ending up so far in the past. So, perhaps "Great Scott" is actually a euphemism for some obscenity.

Drawn in Krita and Inkscape.