The Annotated Alice!
Originally published: June 30, 1999

Early on I played around with using contemporary pop culture references in the strip, much like Foxtrot. I soon gave it up in preference to my own creations (Amazing Girl, Star Amazons, Etc). The reasons were two fold: one, it's much more fun, and two, the strips with the references look dated rather quickly. If one looks at Calvin and Hobbes it never shows it's age, whereas Foxtrot can seem antiquated when reading the older books. To me the Star Trek: Voyager strips are like that. So now I don't use such references.

"Ah! But Michael," I hear you saying, "You've used other characters like Captain Kirk, Sherlock Holmes, and the Marx Brothers." That's different, says me. Those characters have passed from pop culture to icon status. Still I tend to prefer my own creations where ever I can.

This strip also marks an important early marketing success for Alice. Before this strip was posted I had a daily readership of fifty readers. I posted some announcements on Star Trek newsgroups, which helped a bit, but then a Star Trek news site picked up the story. My readership soared to 500! (at least for a couple days). A success I've had a hard time duplicating since then. My readership is much better now but that was a x1000 increase (I think, my math is horrible). Ah, those were the days.