Yep, I’m resorting to THIS again. Sorry guys, but I really, REALLY burned myself out getting that big ‘ol Conventional Wisdom update finished, and ended up sleeping through when I would normally have been working on today’s comic. So here’s a rough draft, the finished version will be up later. And I DO have a Voting Incentive for today drawn and scanned, so that’ll go up when the finished page does.

Anyway, I’ve worked out the dialog for the next few pages enough to know how much of Mariska’s backstory ISN’T going to be mentioned, so I’ll just go ahead and fill in some blanks right here. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that Nitpickers-in-training (especially very young ones) serve a sort of apprenticeship by accompanying a trained Nitpicker in the field. Normally, this is a one-on-one arrangement, but Ichabod’s was a little unusual. His Nitpicking mentor was actually married to another Nitpicker, and they worked as a duo. While Ichabod was assigned to one of the couple, Mariska was assigned to the other, and she’s basically been his kid sister ever since (I’ve got a suspicion that he doesn’t have any biological siblings, or at least none he has a relationship with)

EDIT: AND WE HAVE A NEW VOTING INCENTIVE!!!

(Historical Notes: The alt text apologizes to Future Me for making up all these names but leaving it up to my later temporal incarnation to actually make up the CHARACTERS those names go with.  Well JOKE’S ON YOU, Past Me, because I totally forgot most of these names were a thing and just drew up a whole different cast of Nitpicker characters, most of whom are only just debuting in the 2020 Christmas comics as I write this!  …well, okay, there’s ONE reference here that I realized I could retroactively work into the crop of new Nitpickers, but it was NOT something I planed in advance.  At least 75% of the cool callbacks in Far Out There are mostly by accident.)