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Apartment 3-G, 1/31/05

So here’s Lu Ann’s long lost … well, what, exactly? Trying to guess just what sort of relative this creepily chipper person might be made me realize that I have no idea how old any of these people are supposed to be. In the comics, when you can’t see someone up close and count their liver spots, you really have to go on cultural cues to try to figure out things like people’s ages, and when everyone seems to get their clothes from a Hollywood costume designer circa 1962, that’s kind of difficult. Is this young person a teenager? Roughly the same age as Lu Ann? And how old is Lu Ann, anyway? 20? 25? 35? Anyone? I had a Texas correspondent who said he’d “been through a lot with these ladies”; maybe he knows.

Anyway, the reason I’m so eager to know this is that I cherish secret hopes that this stray may in fact be Lu Ann’s secret abandoned daughter. Alas, I think they’re far too close in age for that, but it would add a bit of interest to Lu Ann’s otherwise mind-numbingly goodie-goodie personality and backstory.

Margo’s “Hum…?” in panel three is no “More zippers, mule!”, but it is a pretty strange sound effect. I defy you to try to reproduce the actual noise being rendered here. She’s just disgruntled that she’s suddenly not the center of attention anymore, and will no doubt soon retreat to her bedroom to work on her White Slavery Scrapbook.

Bad dye job alert: Mimi the Mysterious Stranger has gone from Manic Panic Redhead on Sunday to mousy blonde during the week. Somewhere in a Malaysian comics-coloring compound, an enraged supervisor is shouting “More red ink, mule!”