My mind is at peace once again. No longer do I hear the chatter and the mantra, “Bring back Mega Matt! Bring back Mega Matt!” For he is here. You may commence rejoicing. While you can…

Marc, ever the artistic scientist, did a some more experimenting to achieve the art in today’s strip. In his own words (and pictures):

I used another unusual method to get a wild 60’s effect for panel 2’s background. I got to thinking about 1960’s type images, which naturally led me to think about the psychedelic light shows put on by band like Pink Floyd in their early days. What their lighting engineer used to do was put a mix of oil, dye, and water in between two glass clock faces and put that on an overhead projector. He would shine the projector on the band and then move the clock faces around to squish and mix the fluids in time with the music, creating a wild display of flowing colors.
I decided to try a similar trick to see what I could come up with. I used a flat bottomed glass bowl, placed in on my light box and poured in some vegetable oil, some water and some colored ink and took some pictures. Unfortunately I didn’t have a second bowl to squish the fluids together, so the effect I ended up photographing isn’t as ambitious as I had pictured in my head, but it still came out pretty cool.
It was a really fun experiment, and definitely the first time working on a comic strip has ever made my hands have ever smell like vegetable oil. In a weird coincidence, today (Friday, Sept. 6) was Roger Waters’ 70th birthday, so it’s fitting the background effect took inspiration from his early performances.