One of the hardest parts about becoming a cook was learning not to hate smokers. As an asthmatic, I’d grown up thinking of smokers as inconsiderate booshdags who couldn’t settle for just killing themselves, they had to take everyone around them down too.

But in a high-stress environment like a professional kitchen, there’s a lot of them, and they turned out to be not the hideous, evil creatures I fancied them to be… I still wish they’d stop making babies breathe tar, and stop disappearing from the line for a smoke break right when we need them, but whatever.

Some old-timey cartoonists would fill up extra spaces in their daily comics with a second comic. Since I’m trying to design more with the final printed product in mind, I decided to try the same thing here. Originally I was going to draw it in a Mutt and Jeff  style,  (And end it with Alan’s feet in the air along with the word “Plop”) But I played with pixel art a lot over the Summer, and I wanted to see how 1-bit sprites would work in a comic.

And yes, I’ve never actually seen a Nicotene patch, and my Wifi was down as I was drawing this. So you get a patch with the letter “N” on it.