Chapter 16 | Page 4b: Mean golden girls

Posted on February 20, 2025 by Brad Guigar

Transcript

Panel 1

(Cassie Cruz speaking to Jeremy, who is standing in front of a board with pictures of various Evil Inc employees.)

Cassie Cruz: Jeremy, we have to find out who has been leaking information to the heroes before they pin it on me! The only nursing home capable of caring for my mother is contingent on my job here! — And even they have their hands full!

Panel 2

(A flashback scene shows Cassie narrating while Princess Charming, an elderly woman in a wheelchair, is interacting with another patient in the nursing home.)

Cassie Cruz (narrating): As a top-tier mind-controller with dementia, my mom keeps reliving the past — and pulling innocent people into her world!

Panel 3

(A flashback continues with an orderly, wearing a red shirt, standing near Princess Charming. Green energy surrounds them as the orderly appears to be in a trance.)

Cassie Cruz (narrating): Last week, an orderly forgot to turn on his neuro-dampener last week. Before anyone knew it, he was reenacting a battle between Mom and Hijinx.

Jeremy: Was Hijinx a hero she used to fight?

Panel 4

Cassie Cruz (narrating): Worse. It was a villain she had a rivalry with.

Princess Charming: I wish I could be like you. It must be so freeing not to stress over every little pound!

Panel 5

(Orderly is sitting on a couch, speaking with a therapist)

Cassie Cruz (narrating): The poor guy has been in counseling ever since!

Orderly: I mean… I thought I looked cute in bangs!

(Comic strip by Brad J. Guigar. © 2025. All rights reserved. Visit evil-inc.com)

CompleteGI_cover_1As part of the Kickstarter campaign for Evil Inc Vol. 8, I released The Complete Greystone Inn as a digital book formatted for your tablet. It has previously been available only as a print-on-demand hardcover.

Special note to my Patreon backers at the the $20 and higher levels: Check your email. You’re getting a free copy of this eBook. Click here for more details.

Greystone Inn was my first webcomic. It ran six days a week from February 2000 to June 2005. And this 416-page book collects the first comic through the last. GI, of course, provided the jumping-off point for Evil Inc. In fact, the very first official Evil Inc comic was Lighting Lady (who first appeared in Greystone) interviewing for a job with the evil corporation. In addition to the complete collection, there’s a thirty-page introduction that includes:
  • A sampling of my high-school- and college-era editorial cartoons.
  • Three weeks of a comic-strip prototype I created in college.
  • Nine weeks of the unpublished strip that was the precursor to Greystone, called Single Guy.
  • All of the details behind my introduction to cartooning, the failed syndicate submissions, and the path that brought me to webcomics.
Over the life of Greystone, there were four collections created — three book were published by Plan 9 Publishing, and I published a fourth. Plan 9 has since disappeared and those books are nearly impossible to find. This volume collects all of those plus a year-and-a-half of strips that have never been collected in book form. I can’t tell you how proud I am to be able to offer this book to you. If you were a fan of Greystone Inn, this is a keeper. If you’re an Evil Inc fan, I think you’ll appreciate the writing — and the deep roots of some of your favorite characters, like Lightning Lady, who have their roots in the comic. Let me put it this way. I’ve long since forgotten what I wrote in those strips, so the punchlines catch me totally by surprise. And I have to say. I wrote some pretty funny stuff in that strip. Don’t believe me? Here’s a smattering of what you can expect: Greystone sampler (PDF). I think you’ll agree. At $19.99, it’s a freaking steal. Get yours right now.