Dear My MP3 Player,

I lost you on the bus, I think, or maybe when I was just getting onto the bus. My MP3 player, I assure you that it wasn’t intentional. I had you playing, as I always did, and a song had just ended as I was getting on the bus, so I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t hear music for a moment, but then when I didn’t hear a song start up again, I checked for you and only found the end of the headphone cord. You were gone. Maybe you caught on something as I stepped onto the bus and fell onto the ground. I couldn’t find you on the floor of the bus.

You may have been an old MP3 player that I would often find reason to complain about. You had no option to play randomly and you had to spend three minutes “updating” every time I recharged you. But you were purple, which was cool. And you took a lot of damage, which is a useful skill for anything I own. You served me well for several years and now I miss you.

But that isn’t the main reason for this letter, MP3 Player. The main thing I need to say is that you are an MP3 Player, you can not read letters. Please stop reading this. It is freakin’ me out. Stop it.

Yours ponderously,
Patrick D Ryall

When I was a young man, I created a superhero. His name was Justice-Man. Click below if you want to read a story about him set exactly sixteen years ago:

It’s hard to read old pencil-on-paper scanned onto the computer (though I’ve had the Space Army up for years), but I just feel like Justice-Man is an important PDR creation who deserves to be on the site. Hopefully someday I’ll get a chance to revisit this character.

I don’t have anything but Phone Guys this week because I’ve been working on other things. Oh well, here it is:

This strip is a call-back to one of the previous year’s batch. Who can say who Pete will hate next year?