Q Toon: Outre Spice

A fellow cartoonist whom I greatly respect once told me that to draw the setting for a cartoon properly, you have to go there and see it for yourself.

I have to confess that I haven't been to a porn shop in many, many years, so if this is not what they look like nowadays — if the skin magazines got replaced by DVDs and the DVDs by QR codes — if the guy at the register is required by local ordinance to wear sleeves — I apologize.

And I didn't mean for the guy at the register to appear gap-toothed. It didn't look that way in pencil, but even in color, his upstage cheek looks even to me like a tooth.

The outdated cash register with the attached credit card reader, on the other hand, is intentional.

The challenge that preoccupied me in planning this cartoon was how to portray an adult entertainment establishment without displaying things that would shock and offend any of my very fine, very respectable editors. There should be an inflatable sex toy somewhere, genitalia discreetly obscured by some other item. But, oh, well. I didn't leave room for one.

So, anyway, play safe, everyone. ¡Protejase! Trage ein Kondom. La vita che salvi potrebbe essere la tua.