Unused strip for May 23, 2018 (Patreon)

This would have been the third strip in the storyline, following the first two flashback strips.  The Sal/Marcie flashback sequences came in threes, and I figured I'd follow their template.  But this strip was definitely unnecessary for a number of reasons.

1) Man, Mike is going all Sherlock way too quickly.  

2) This flashback is supposed to ease into Ethan and Mike having a reasonably benevolent relationship interplay in the present day, and this leaves them on a sour note.

3) I didn't really want to give the impression that, like, Mike started out merely saying things bluntly, just being so perceptive that he turned people off, rather than being, y'know, a jackass.  That WOULD be a pretty fun arc, if I were interested in (badly) rehabilitating Mike as a character.  But he's done too much that's kinda shitty, and that definitely wouldn't land.  It would work if Mike had been more mild along the way, but he hadn't, so oh well.  

No amount of backstory really rationalizes Mike's behavior.  You can bring some fleeting traces of nuance, which is what I attempted to do, but just about any approach where you "explain" Mike to make him "okay" just makes things grosser, narratively.  

Anyway, later I essentially reskinned this strip to be mostly about something else later in the flashback timeline, because it was 5am and it'd been a terrible day and needed a break.