Okay, by now you know I wrote a daily comic strip near the end of my college career called Cereal. And if you read the last Cereal post, you know that I devoted a sequence of these strips to a Michael Jackson parody. Only I couldn’t post anything at the time because I was out of town and I drew the comics on this stuff called paper that you can scan only if you have it with you. Which I didn’t. But now I’m home so scan away. Which I have. And here are the results.

These strips mark the very beginning of Book 3. It’s January 1984 (the same time Apple released the first Macintosh computer), and altho I’m still making just $2.50 per strip, I have a small but devoted fan base. (More on that later.) And so I decided to risk everything and turn one of my ancillary characters—a token mulâtre lad named Shea—into an overnight superstar.

It begins with Shea reinventing himself as a crime fighter called Captain Fife. But by way of ridiculous situation-style “comedy,” he is rendered disheveled, clumsy, and infinitely beautiful. (As are we all, in time.) Which causes him to be mistaken for a pop superstar, ultimately remonikered Dudley Do-Rap.

It’s inane, it’s trivial, it’s retro. And frankly, it’s starts rather lamely. But two mentions of merit: First, it features the beginning of something that I haven’t seen elsewhere, the creative use of iconic borders. Second, it gets better as it goes along.

Note two crazy things: III-007 features an inverted nod to President Obama, altho I’d never heard of him at the time. And III-015 references Ed McMahon, who died the same week as MJ. What are the chances?

These are real comics of the time, no edits made. Here goes:

By way of explanation, a few footnotes. III-006: at the time, “Thriller” was the most expensive music video ever produced. III-009: Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. III-14: Phyllis Diller was (and possibly remains) a raunchy comedienne with crazy hair.

Meanwhile, I offer no defense for the “skunk” theme employed by III-04 and III-05. I neither know nor knew of any scent used or abused by Michael Jackson. I include these strips merely to flesh out a threadbare plotline. Meanwhile, I omitted III-11 and III-12 because they sucked.