In action films it seems that the villain is always destined to waste time describing his/her/their true motives for taking over the world, the country, or the local pizzeria; meanwhile giving the captured hero time to break loose, destroy the villain, and try to save the movie. So it’s not enough for Aparna to steal (back) the laptop (which she doesn’t own) with the program (that she was paid to write for Cricket Bro). She has to take time to wipe Cricket Bro’s face with her own justification. This waste of time should give Bro’s cohorts plenty of time to figure things out and come to the rescue. Odd isn’t it: Who are the “bad guys” here? In spite of Cricket Bro taking away Aparna’s righteous indignation in panel 2 by revealing that his so-called insult was just his way of firing people, Aparna didn’t take the hint. She just continues with her vengeance panel 3.

Getting a bit nerdy here for a minute: What the hell is Aparna doing using the antiquated, unsecured File Transfer Protocol to upload her program to “the Internet”? For one thing, what server is she trying to send to? The transfer can’t simply go to “the Internet”; that’s not how FTP works. If it was going up to any server, it would normally be the Cricket Bro’s server. I suppose we can assume the entire building is a wired hotspot. So when did she have time to log on? Wouldn’t her account have been disabled when she was fired?!

Regarding FTP, there are several modern alternatives she should be using, but we need not get into those. After all, this is not a computer science blog. Suffice to say, it is a curious trope Rivera uses; and one that most readers will likely not even recognize. As this is a family comic strip for general readers, Rivera could have simply used a more recognizable abbreviation, such as XFER to keep nerds like me quiet. But then again, we know that Rivera likes to send up her readers.

Back to the story:  I suspect that there will be a full-court showdown by Saturday between the two groups, before jumping back to Cherry and her brother’s swine. That should make for an interesting week to come!

Finishing on a visual note, we are back (I believe) to a well-constructed set of panels, very nicely drawn and composed. Notice how Cricket Bro’s face is darkened in panel 3. Is this symbolic of his “dark nature” or simply a means of making a contrast to the background? Instead of using old-fashioned Ben Day dots or even simple hatching, Rivera uses a pattern of mixed line types, which adds more texture, though it makes no attempt to suggest facial contours. In this particular case, it would probably come across as too busy.