In case you were wondering, no children were harmed in the making of this strip.

Originally, I conceived the cartoon as a traditional four-panel job. However; as I was sketching it out, I felt the beats needed to be broken out and given their own panel--especially the final panel where Rufus sees that he is holding gasoline. And, being that this is a webcomic and I am not restricted by newspaper space, I decided, "what the hey," and gave it more room.

I also had some punchline retort from Rufus in the last panel, but decided to let the visuals stand on their own. My wife--my indispensible sounding board--constantly reminds me (and rightfully so) to use less words, to strive to work the dialogue down to its bare essence--a cartoon haiku, if you will. As a result, you now have a silent penultimate AND ultimate panel.

I'm not sure if you agree with my decision or not, but here it is--such as it is. As you can tell, in this cartoon I was channeling my inner Tex Avery.