With the Valentine’s Day malady behind us, we can get started on the plot proper – and naturally it starts with a bang.

At some time that tradition served the purpose of waking up those members of the audience who had fallen asleep during the endless ads and trailers before the movies – but once the ads and trailers started including more explosions than the movie proper, that rationale started to lose legitimacy. But I feel it’s still worth doing.

And the bang is sufficiently justified in-universe, anyway, since scientific research at Lillytown University has an established tendency to result in explosions. Particularly around New Year’s Eve, but with some frequency also throughout the rest of the year.

In this elegant way, the setting is re-introduced, and unsurprisingly it’s still the campus of Lillytown U. As ill-defined as that campus is in regards to its features… Another thing established by this first strip is a season – and it’s clearly summer, as evidenced by the color scheme and the cicada sound effects.

Admittedly, that’s actually a stag beetle instead of a cicada…but, in best B-movie tradition, it’s the thought that counts?

More on Monday.