In November 2007, I went to Ireland. Saw the town my ancestors came from. It was powerful and moving. I was not impressed by their sandwiches.

At this point, the comic still was trying to find it’s footing post-Shark Train. Back then, it was meant to be much more observational/slice-of-life than it ultimately ended up becoming. Certainly I had no plan to ever use Marcus again at this point and, despite the title bar referencing pandas, I was months away from coming up with Pinder.

There were few strips from this era that didn’t quite work, and the Ireland strips do feel a little out of place now amongst the rest of the strips to come… but I still like them.