T.O.'ed

T.O.'ed

Posted by Brian • February 24, 2017

Original Release Date: July 26, 2011

This page is really a mess. The first panel is spent covering some poor geography research on my part. I wanted the Viisi headquarters buried under Monument Valley, but on a previous page, I had Renee say that it was outside of Flagstaff. Well, it turns out Flagstaff and Monument Valley aren't as close to one another as I thought, so Renee has to backtrack here to cover my mistake.

Then, there's some small talk, which is fine. It makes sense that Mike would ask about events in San Francisco since they left.

The page ends with this Terrell Owens joke that I don't even know how to begin to explain. Terrell Owens was a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers for a number of years, and then he went to the Philadelphia Eagles, my favorite team, in 2004. He had a great season, got injured, and then got better just in time to re-join the Eagles in the Super Bowl. He had a great game, but the Eagles still lost. Over the off-season, he and his new agent, Drew Rosenhaus, started to cause a bunch of trouble as they attempted to re-negotiate Owens' (arguably underpaying) contract, which eventually led to his suspension, deactivation, and release by the Eagles. All of that said, being an Eagles fan, I felt like Owens was kind of unprofessional, and so I didn't really like him anymore, and took a long overdue opportunity to diss him on this page.

Still, this joke is weird. This page was made in 2011, but Owens only played for the 49ers through 2003. The best explanation I can offer is that in the Mike and the Ninja universe, all of this is still happening in the year 2000, the year I began prouction of the comic, and so it would make sense that Owens would still be playing for the 49ers.

You can look at all of this as either a poorly timed joke and reference, or as a curious study of asynchronous creator/creation timelines. The choice is yours!

Also, there's that newspaper blowing in the breeze I mentioned some time ago that mops up the unfinished Dr. Ossims/Antagonist Robots story arc. We hardly knew ye.