Transcript

Evil Inc, March 11, 2025

Panel 1

(Matt the Henchman and Angus the Minotaur are sitting at a bar. Angus is holding a phone, while matt has a drink in front of him. Angus' phone buzzes with a "boop boop" sound.)

Angus: "ACH! I'm sorry, mate! Duty calls! I'm workin' a gig with The Lethal Librarian!"

Panel 2

Matt (narration panel): "You got picked by the Dewey Decimator?! I'm jealous! I love her tagline!"

Lethal Librarian (a stylish woman with green glasses, a green blazer, and a stern expression, stands pointing.): "You're OVERDUE!"

Panel 3

Angus: "Between you and me, I actually picked her!" Matt (excitedly): "Geez Louise! How many henches get to pick their own assignments?!"

Panel 4

(Angus smirks while Matt looks on, intrigued.)

Angus: "Only two henches have top-level clearance to access the Master Job Board at Evil Inc... Angus: "Me, and Spider Mackenzie."

Off-panel voice: "Spider Mackenzie?! He died in that Land Piranha Incident!"

Panel 5

(Matt leans in, skeptical.)

Angus: "Are you sure?!"

Panel 6

(A skeleton, covered in small green piranha-like creatures, sits eerily still.)

Spider: "Oh, I'm certain."

My wife and I are rarely “crafty” people, but when the mood hits us, we can really do some cool stuff. And the mood hit us last weekend. As I’ve shared in the past, a fellow geek-dad and me have started a D&D campaign among our sons — all under the age of 11. He’s the DM, and I’m a character, playing along with the boys. We’ve had a lot of fun sharing our love for the game with the kids — and they’ve really taken to it. So when one of the friends of my 11yo said that he wanted a D&D starter set for his birthday, we decided to do not only that, but invite him to our regular D&D group. And that’s where it all started… with my wife saying, “Y’know, we could fake-age some paper with tea and then make the invitation look all archaic and junk.” And we were off to the races. We stained some drawing paper, and then we dried it on a sheet of tin foil with a hair dryer. Then I did a little fake calligraphy and burned the edges to make it look like it had a run-in with a dragon. We sealed with with candle wax. Next we faux-distressed some more paper to act as wrapping paper, wrapped the book up and assembled the entire gift which included all of this plus some dice and a dice bag. We were both pretty proud of how it turned out.