As a child I had a bit of trouble reading. Still, I remember looking through Carl Barks’ Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times 
and Bill Watterson’s The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes 
and putting the stories together as best I could without words. That’s the great thing about comic strips, they don’t always need words. Certain “sequential art” historians and theorists (Scott McCloud, etc.) even put forth the idea that prehistoric cave paintings were comic strip precursors. And they sort of are, a collection of pictures that tell a story, with or without words.
But I didn’t set out to do this comic without words. I just roughed it in, in my sketchy style, and noticed it worked perfectly well without any dialogue.
The joke behind this strip is, I think, something many parents, and children alike will recognize. And maybe not just them, because my husband saw what I was drawing and said, “That looks like something a kid would do. Or something I would do” He would too.
The caregivers’ eternal struggle, “eat your vegetables”
And the sarcastic, single bite response many children give makes for frustrating parenting, but good comedy. I even have this struggle with my baby (dog) Michelle.
I cook her food myself, and if I chop up veggies and put it in with her meat, she will delicately pick round them, and place them on the floor for me to step in. Her own little form of civil doggy-disobedience. So I’ve taken to pureeing them. Pick around THAT, you sneaky pup.
Dogs aside, Bridget is like many children, much more excited by the prospect of egg rolls, french fries, and macaroni & cheese than she is asparagus, and swiss chard.
