Mark, our beloved helium based gas person, is enjoying his eternal summer vacation (he is unemployed and rich) in a bright summer day. Unlike most people who put normal things on their bucket lists like picnics or road trips or something like that, Mark chose to buy a boat.
Captain Kera, a very seasoned sea captain who had recently retired from an almost lifelong career as a seafaring captain of various ships, was hired to show Mark the ropes and to keep the ship afloat. Mark doesn’t seem to see the seriousness in controlling a vessel as big as a ferry.
Lore
Mark is wealthy, as he was given wealth immediately after being released from the lab he was created in.
He was created to test how much loneliness a man would handle. They still gave him money, but no social connections or knowledge on how to make any of them.
In the summer, Mark uses his wealth to do stupid things with it, like buying things he doesn’t need. One of them being this yacht, called “S.S. Inflated Ego”.
He doesn’t even want to learn how to drive or properly use the ship, he wants to blast the horn and mess with it.
It is telling of how he is living a beautiful childhood… as an adult.
Personal meaning
With this comic, I wanted to make a nostalgia trip, as I had decided to practice “drawing whatever I want” to reclaim my art as mine again.
So what I did with it was bring back things from my childhood from 2012, the literal toys I loved to play with, and turned them into actual, big-ified, originalized, canonical elements that belong in Mark’s creative universe.
I wanted Varkoula (it means “little boat in Greek), my favorite toy from when I was 7 years old, to exist again. Not as a fragile little inflatable toy, but as a BEAST. A whole-ass SHIP.
And from that idea, it somehow ended in the comic being a funny metaphor for rich people throwing their money on stupid things that can only be used for bragging, like a yacht.
Facts about this piece
- Captain Kera’s design is directly inspired by the Kerajeholopterus from Dinofroz. A dinosaur-themed franchise from 2012. I had (and still have, in 2026 while reposting this comic) the toy dinosaur, which I had previously lost in the sea and then FOUND AGAIN years later in THE SAME SEA. Which is also why I made the Kera character an experienced seafarer.
- The boat design for S.S. Inflated Ego is inspired by a discontinued INTEX inflatable boat bath toy that I also had in my childhood in 2012. I was very attached to it. SO attached that during 2025 when I made this comic I found the same inflatable boat in AMERICA and ordered it and paid 35 euro for shipping.
- The interior of the ship is a tribute to what the inside of my cargo ship from the Roblox game Shipping Lanes used to be like, from memory. I hadn’t played the game in a long time when making the comic, but remembered the colors.
- The map on the wall inside the ship shows the coastline of the Dogean Capital city, in which Mark lives and where the story is set.
- The sail on the yacht is technically useless. It was made as a personal easter egg made just for me initially, to exist as a decorative detail celebrating Varkoula, the inflatable boat.