Wardrobe Malfunction

Wardrobe Malfunction
Chapter	24 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	September 25, 2006 (2006-09-25)
Page count	4
Major characters	Mike, Paulo, Lucy, Daisy
Minor characters	Tess, Sue, David, Gym Teacher (High School), Katie
Locations	Roseville High School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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It takes Paulo a whole week to notice Mike has stopped wearing his scarf, mostly because he's used to wiping his nose on it. The story of where it went involves an angry mob, raw eggs, and some very guilty friends.

Synopsis

Gym class finds Paulo sick and sneezing through warm-ups. He reaches absentmindedly to wipe his nose on Mike's scarf and grabs nothing but air — Mike hasn't worn the thing all week. Mike starts to explain what happened to it, then works out the truth mid-sentence: "So you've been using it to WIPE YOUR SNOT?!"

A flashback shows where the scarf went. An angry mob once beat and egged Mike over having "messed around with two girls by mistake". He dumped the egg-soaked scarf in his locker and simply never took it home.

Back in the present, Mike refuses to go fetch it for Paulo's nose. Tess leans in with a tissue and a flirty offer instead, giving him a spurting nosebleed. Caked in blood and snot, Paulo shambles zombie-style after a horrified Daisy. She begs Lucy to stop him, and Lucy obliges with a single punch that puts him out cold. Paulo, as it happens, was not the only culprit. David confesses eagerly, Sue admits she used the scarf on sticky cafeteria food, and Daisy sheepishly owns up to loving how soft it feels on her nose.

Flashback "cases" lay out the rest of the evidence. The worst is David's, who once burned his hand on a spilled beaker in science class and wiped the smoking thing clean on Mike's scarf. The fumes knocked Mike out on the spot.

David's approach to chemical burns leaves a little to be desired.

Back in the gym, Mike learns that the lab incident actually landed him in the hospital. He snaps with an "I HATE YOU ALL!!" and storms off to run his laps. Tess remarks that she wouldn't be surprised if Mike kills them all one day.

Trivia & observations

• All four pages of the chapter were published on the same day, March 22, 2010.
• Paulo's spurting nosebleed at Tess's flirting is a deliberate anime nod. Veronica's commentary crows, "LOOK AT THAT NOSEBLEED JUST LIKE IN ONE OF MY JAPANESE ANIMES".
• The chapter as presented is a redraw of the original pages. Veronica's commentary on the punch page recalls that in the original run, the blood and snot kept jumping between Lucy's left and right hand, forcing several rounds of editing and rescanning.
• Mike's "I HATE YOU ALL!!" is word-for-word what Lucy said to the group back in Enter High School.
• This is only the second appearance of the gym teacher, who debuted running the dodgeball class in A Difficult Choice.
• The original artwork of the chapter's first page was later sold through the BCB store as part of the "Best Buds" original-pages pack, paired with the first page of Buddy System.

Related chapters

• A Difficult Choice: The flashback restages the cheater mob from this chapter, where Paulo turned the whole school against Mike over the Sandy reveal, baseball bat and all.
• Left Behind: Mike's scarfless streak ends here, when Tess gives him a new orange-and-yellow scarf. Paulo marks the occasion by summoning the cheater mob all over again.
• Unrequited: The abandoned scarf turns up again much later, still sitting dirty in Mike's locker. It's even drawn in its original blue, standing apart from the chapter's coloring.
• Feline Filibuster: Lucy revives this chapter's central gag by loudly blowing her nose on Mike's scarf at the lunch table.