Some webcartoonists probably would have handled the fourth panel above by simply drawing the "Stephen should buy groceries" flag. But here at Terror Island, we care about art more than they do. That's why we don't stop at designing how a flag should look. I then take the design, print it out in the form of a physical object, and then make a photographic record of that object. That's because photocomics are about being real. We're not going to try to pass off fake images on you. Every panel is an actual scene from physical reality, which is one of my top ten favorite realities.

I try not to pry into the personal lives of our characters, so I don't know what happens off-panel in these storylines, but based on my knowledge of Sid and Stephen, I assume that Sid and Stephen will recognize that the flag and the book cancel each other out, returning us to the stalemate scenario. I am less confident about this next part, but I am pretty sure that it is not exactly a stalemate, since making this flag for Sid likely ate away at a piece of Stephen's soul, both the part of him that cares about not getting groceries and the part that cares about not making really bad flags. Sid on the other hand wrote a pretty neat story that he does not consider to undermine his professional credibility.

I think about the grocery competition in terms of tennis scores, so to summarize, the strip generally takes place with a score of deuce, and it was, very briefly, advantage Stephen, but Sid has better net game than we all expected, garnering a swift two point swing, leaving us with a current score of slight advantage Sid.

If you're thinking "there's no such score as 'slight advantage' in tennis," I remind you that no one elected you king of tennis, so maybe keep those thoughts to yourself.