ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre
— Leporello cataloguing Don Giovanni’s sexual conquests
Mitch Marks has sent me a comic strip appropriate for the day (which drips with sex) and personally meaningful to me (it has a Zwicky in it, though only for alphabetical purposes): the 2/13 strip in Graham Harrop’s comic UFO, in which a character I’ll call John (for Don Juan / Don Giovanni) prepares to catalogue his infidelities, not by country as in the Mozart / Da Ponte opera (but in Spain there are already a thousand and three), but by letter of the alphabet, from Alice Aabz to Zelda Zwicky:
(#1) John’s Valentine’s Day gift to Moira
About the day. 2/13 is the day before Valentine’s Day; and also (my own invention) what I’ve called LDV Day, Lincoln Darwin Valentine Day, an occasion for rampant man-on-man sexual excess; and also (this year) Mardi Gras (whoop whoop) — so it’ s pretty much drenched in sex.
About the toon. From the GoComics site on UFO:
Somewhere in the vastness of space exists a small planet called UFO. On it is a two-star hotel run by Quagmire and Melrose, brothers who have been abducted from Earth. Quagmire is the overbearing older brother who manages the hotel while Melrose is his put-upon bellhop. The desk clerk is Cyril, a supercilious avian who brooks no nonsense. Frank and Earl are the air traffic controllers who guide incoming aliens to the planet.
And there are numerous supporting characters.
The strips have been collected in two anthologies:
(#2) The first anthology, from 2016
(#3) The second anthology, from 2022
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