This particular outtake is, of course, only one of a great many that were caused by…uh…the elaborate special effects that allowed an alien creature like Latho to come alive on the screen. >_>

In reality, we might have already passed beyond the horizon where realizing something like this with a puppet was actually cheaper than doing it with CGFX – at least for the cheapest sort of CGFX, which would be the type relevant to a B-movie production. So, yeah – perhaps it’s already unrealistic to assume that a B-movie production would use a puppet in this way today, and otherwise it will be the case very, very soon. So I’m happy I’ve managed to make use of – perhaps – the final opportunity to show it like this.

Since George is the only one with puppeteering experience in the crew, the rest of the task – to wit, manipulating the puppet’s left hand – falls to Lee Douglas. Simply because any task that’s not somehow assigned to somebody else automatically falls to him. He’s the indentured-servant-of-last-resort for this production. Given his lack of experience, he’s not doing too bad of a job…the thing about flipping the audience off could have been caused by the difficulties of fitting in beside George’s bulk, but just as likely was some kind of Freudian-gesture-slip.* >_>

In the process, the strip also reveals a little bit of background information on George Geekish. I.e., that he used to work for a very highly regarded puppet performance outfit in his youth. Which, I guess, does fit the character quite well? Oh, and, less surprisingly, that he used to thinner back then.

More on Thursday.

*The audience, after all, is the root cause of all of his problems, and they don’t care a jot about it. How could Lee not dislike them? =P