When Black Friday comes.

“Black Friday” from Steely Dan’s “Two Against Nature” concert. The only good Black Friday out there.

Today is “Black Friday,” which in the States is the day after Thanksgiving, widely reported as the biggest shopping day of the year. It’s not really. That’d be the Monday after Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is when half of America, groggy from having overeaten the day before, spends the day lounging and eating leftovers—no longer obligated to cook all that food.

The other half is either in the merchandising business and is obligated to work; or consumers who decide they actually want to brave the crowds and contribute to the madness.

Hence the name “Black Friday.”

Defective Mr. Squish products.

In which Leonard gets in trouble for selling crap.
(Mr. Squish, CSU Sacramento Hornet, March 1991.)

This is the first appearance of the glass-filled Mr. Squish plush toy. I actually wanted to manufacture them, you know: Cheap fuzzy dolls that would make a tinkling sound whenever you moved them, because they were stuffed with a combination of ceiling insulation and shards of safety glass from busted windshields. (I drew the glass a lot more jagged in panel 3.) I didn’t just want to joke about Mr. Squish merchandising being made from inferior product. I wanted to take the joke further, deliberately make inferior product, and have people buy it anyway, enjoying the irony of it all.