The dialogue in today’s strip is absolutely real. I heard it at a local Burger King several months ago (which just goes to show how long I’ve waited before uploading this).

Basically, the manager of this particular Burger King is a fast-food stereotype: short, overweight, balding, pasty, and greasier than the hamburgers. The poor guy was probably in his mid-thirties but looked like he was ten years older. His staff consisted entirely of teenagers, and it was easy to see that they didn’t take this guy seriously.

Today’s strip is all about fire! I wanted to create a strip with Ben and Winslow having a seemingly normal (or what passes for normal in their world) conversation, oblivious to the flames that had suddenly burst to life on their heads. And then at the end, I would hit you all with a profound message or something. See what I did there? I’m educating you through laughter and flammability. And that’s not an easy thing to do. I’m sure my Nobel is already in the mail.

All of the characters in Ben & Winslow exhibit some sort of exaggerated aspect of my own personality. All of them except Laura, who is the strip’s embodiment of my wife.

The conversation in this strip may have actually happened a few weeks ago. At least that’s what my wife will tell you, but she’s a liar.

If you live in the DC area and take public transportation, you’ve probably seen the hundreds of Lincoln movie posters plastered all over the insides of select Metro stations. And when I say “all over,” I mean “all over every available flat surface.” The posters mainly consist of Abraham Lincoln’s real-life (or maybe imagined-to-be-real-life) quotations and Daniel Day-Lewis’ face. They are impossible to ignore.

This strip is based on a misunderstanding my son has about what ghosts say. He thinks they all say “Boom!” but I had to explain to him that most ghosts actually say “Boo!” and that only exploding ghosts say “Boom!” He’s only four, of course, so he hasn’t really encountered ghosts of many varieties. And of course, according to an earlier strip, most ghosts are kids under bedsheets, anyway.