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This is the LAST DAY to contribute to our Castro Valley High Art Department fundraiser drive! If you've been holding out so as to build the dramatic presence of your contribution, the moment is nigh!! You can donate here, or hop on over to the new (and rad) episode Jack and Voytek and donate there for some fantastic Xander Kent art! Deadline is midnight tonight, so let's make some magic happen!

$10 Gets you a Sketch from either me or Xander Kent!
$20 Gets you a Sketch and a copy of Light Opera and Heavy Consequences
$50 Gets you an appearance in an upcoming Frederick story arc as a genuine character!

I'm going to let Geoff tell the story of the three and a half years he has been planning and laying in wait to bring back this episode, but I can at least talk about the origin thereof. It was early 2008, and we were in the middle of the Civil War arc (extra points if you were with us back when that first came out), when Geoff's computer gave up the ghost after years of putting up with him never cleaning its poor dust-encrusted innards. So, for that week I wrote up two quick 4-panel black and white filler episodes, because that's as much layout as I knew (and know) how to do. I had been reading the book Woodrow Wilson wrote about the mid to late nineteenth century in American politics, which meant spending some intimate time with the Low to Middlin party-manufactured presidents of the era (except Grover Cleveland, who was a total G), all of which brewed into those four panels.

As to the origin of Froot Piez, that was an episode that Geoff wrote from The Training of a Fop holiday special waaaay back in 2007, so he can talk more on that.

In other news, I Want My Hat Back, by Jon Klassen, is perhaps the funniest thing I've read this year. My family and I have read it, oh, about 10 times in the last half hour, and it keeps getting better. It centers on a bear's search for his hat, and is a masterpiece of timing. Somebody could use this as a textbook in How Humor Works. I LOVE IT.

- Count Dolby von Luckner

Harrison, Hayes, and Cleveland all feature in a 4-panel comic that The Count did back when I was having computer trouble. It is one my favorite episodes.

I've been talking about bringing the middlin' Presidents back for awhile. The confluence of the type of story I wanted to tell with this arc, as well as some exposition I wanted to reveal, made bringing them back a good fit.

Since I was already self-indulging by bringing back Harrison, Hayes, and Cleveland, I figured I'd throw another one my favorites in this episode.

In the 1950s, Froot Piez were called Froot Pies. I think Frederick must have gotten the Piez for Nietzsche from the 1980s, which was the flaky golden age of snack cake themed advertising comics.

Seanbaby has the definitive page for discussing snack cakes in comics. This still can make me cry laughing. It just did.

--Geoff