Back in the early 1990s, cartoonist Mark Stanley was developing a comic strip that was already appearing in the (late) independent fanzine "Yarf!" and in the 'funny animal' APAzine "Rowrbrazzle". The comic strip was called "Freefall" - an outer space epic - and it revolves around the crew of the 'Savage Chicken': 'Sam Starfall' (a squid-like alien who is more con artist than commander), 'Florence Ambrose' (a genetically engineered Bowman's Wolf, who was hired as the ship's chief mechanic, but whose real job is to generally undo all of Sam's snafus), and 'Helix' (a robot sidekick, who tries to straighten out Sam's snafus, too, but ends up making each situation a whole lot worse).

Eventually, "Freefall" made the transition from 'hard copy' comic strip to its present status as a webcomic - debuting in the latter format in March, 1998. And although it premiered in black-and-white, you can now view "Freefall" strips in full color, by visiting http://freefall.purrsia.com/

Back in 1992, when Mark was still a 'Brazzler, we used to exchange 'snail-mailed' messages, and occasionally traded images of our respective characters. The following image was one of them (which turned up in my own "Rowrbrazzle" column). I've decided to add color to make all of the characters stand out much more...

On top of that, this gag falls under the "cartoon caption creation" category - first made popular in the (late) British humor magazine Punch, followed by current contests in both The New Yorker magazine and the "Doc Rat" webcomic. When I first drew this one-panel cartoon, I had a dozen different captions in mind for my bobcat to utter. But I'd finally decided to leave Rob's thought bubble blank, and allowed the readers to come up with their own caption(s).

Of course, in the event none of you "Fur Affinity" folks out there can think like my 'fursona' could, I'll periodically post one of my original caption ideas from the 1990s. Nevertheless, I hope many of you enjoy this 'blast (off) from the past'!