No sooner retired from the film industry, Doombad attempted a comeback on paper, whilst still in bed. The he was seen for the she that she was when the male Parrotox began his pursuit in earnest, and stories in the form of cartoon strips emerged and re-emerged, without ever seeing the light of day. I improved them and improved them until the improvements started going the other way and then they got worse and worse until the process would start all over again. What were the stories about, you might wonder. In part they were about the pointlessness of being and the uselessness of doing, often peppered with scandalous acts against beliefs. At the centre was Doombad’s exhaustion and lack of will to live. The humorous stories co-featured the mother—Old Stick, the worm-loving friend—Huturioee, a series of grandiose worms, and the amorous suitor—Parrotox. Re-written and re-drawn in every conceivable comic format they always got torn up more times than I could count, as that always seemed the fitting conclusion to this crowded parade of picture and speech. It seemed impossible for me to lay out sequential line drawings with story-line/speech on a page and not destroy it. It even occurred one day that a cartoon agent took Doombad in hand and disciplined her into a conventional newspaper strip. How those boxes and squares had confined Doombad! More confused than ever, but trying to please, Doombad as Newspaper Strip was turned down. After her rejection the boxes disappeared again and the layout returned to a free arrangement, which continued to be torn up. I longed for emptiness and something pure and every story-filled page always ended in tatters. Eventually I abandoned the comic-image-with-speech-caption format. During this period, Doombad’s body had refused to conform to one shape. It had grown and shrunk and now and then displayed the mature figure of a woman. But Doombad remained true to her origins: the previous abstract shapes had never worn clothes, and the habit of undress continues to this day.