Nanase's next logical question after "NOAH?!" would be "how the gingersnaps do YOU know Noah?" That wouldn't have revealed anything new, however, so I skipped it.

If you personally would have liked a recap because you don't quite remember it, however, then I recommend simply re-reading Indiana Elliot and The Temple of Swedish Furniture.

As for what they're drinking and why they're drinking something when they're in an ice cream shop, well, I've been to a Dairy Queen or two in my day and figured it would be really easy to draw frozen slush drinks--I mean, it would totally be appropriate for these characters to order such things. Yes.

This whole thing about Elliot wanting to hang out at the comic book shop to see Justin and Nanase is actually a concept that hits very close to home for me. For one thing, the very fact that Justin works in a comic shop was inspired by a friend of mine working in a comic shop. For another, the entire reason I got into comic books was because I was trying to find common ground with other people.

Note specifically comic books, not strips. I always used to pillage the newspaper for the funnies, and it should be no surprise whatsoever that I read Calvin and Hobbes. I also was a huge Simpsons fan. Both Calvin and Bart were cartoon kids who were into comic books. As a young child who had trouble connecting with other kids, I thought getting into comic books would give me common ground.

Yes, it's as pathetic as it sounds. On the plus side, the X-Men cartoon wound up being something I genuinely liked, and I did manage to get into and enjoy the comics for a while. You know, unlike Spawn. Spawn failed me, as did 90's Spider-Man. I enjoyed some trade paperbacks of Spider-Man from back when his angst-o-meter was at a 3 out of 10 instead of a 9,457 out of 10, but whatever.

Point is, there was a time when I was very interested in finding a comic book I could get into and follow as an effort to increase my popularity. Did I mention I had trouble understanding other kids?

These days, I do have a fondness for iconic comic book characters and just the whole general super hero feel. I really like Superman and Batman, but don't actually read their comics. It took a lot of different people praising it, but I finally gave Power Girl a try. I don't know if the quality keeps up (I only have the first trade paperback of her current series), but what I've read is really good and funny. It's a shame that comic wasn't around when I was kid.

What? Oh! Right. This comic. Um... OH! I actually went through the trouble of deciding where exactly this ice cream place was relative to the dojo and what could be seen outside of the windows, but when I tried to actually make it visual, it either looked like there weren't windows or didn't have enough contrast to really make out. In the end, I decided to cut my losses and just do my best to make the windows identifiable as windows.