quote:
Woudln't you have to get laid to be a purveyor of syphilis?
well, Drexle, there's an unspoken backstory to the strip. you see, DragonXero's character was once a happenin' kinda guy--in fact, he had a wife and five kids. when he was laid off from the factory, though, he hit skid row abruptly. it was tragic. every night, he would troll the back alleys of philadelphia, looking for crack, smack, or whatever cleverly-named drugs he could get hold of. he forgot where he lived, relegating his precious family to an out-of-the-way corner of his mind that he could not reclaim.
then one night, he could no longer find a man to fellate for extra cash, and even if he had been able to, he wouldn't have been able to "score," as his dealer was on vacation in Minneapolis. dejected and broken, and already with the vague fear that he had contracted some manner of social disease from his wayward behavior, he took a long, introspective walk through the streets of the city. pausing at every bridge, and on every train track, longing for a death that would instantly release him from the misery his lifestyle had wrought, he still soldiered on. finally, he reached an epiphany: standing, exhausted, before the window of an electronics store, his eye landed on a TV in the shop window, and on that TV was an old episode of Star Trek. the instantly recognizable archetypes, and easy-to-follow-but-full-of-subtext plot entranced him, even though he couldn't hear the dialogue, and he knew he had found his salvation.
he returned to his home, and to the loving embrace of his wife and three of his children (two had died, unfortunately), and set about to collect every episode of Star Trek--all series--that he could get his hands on. after countless hours of sci-fi watching and soul-searching, he found that even though TNG was technically superior in many ways, the original series still called out to the core of his being in ways that no other show could approach. DS9 and Voyager, thought he, were loads of crap. he thus resolved to travel the lands, extolling the virtues of James T. Kirk as not only the best captain of the Enterprise, but also a bona fide personal savior.
fortunately, in the strip, when habnem called him a "purveyor of syphilis," the character had the presence of mind to be unfazed by the ad hominem attack that cut a bit too close to the truth he was so desperately trying to hide. of course, eventually his wife will find out, but that's another story for another strip...