Fair Ladies is a popular gambling game across the Empire of Earth. It features a pyramid deck of cards numbered one through ten, with duplicates equal to the card rank: a single one, two twos, ten tens, etc. The goal of the game is to avoid 'catching' a pair; the last player standing wins.

Lest people think I am far more clever than I actually am, Fair Ladies is a straight rip-off of the Cheapass Games/Crab Fragment Labs game Pairs using the Goblin Poker rules varient. I bought this game off Kickstarter years ago and enjoy the heck out of it for a quick game, plus some of the deck art is amazing.

No, I haven't changed my mind on the hybrid format already -- but it occurred to me, about halfway through wrestling with this page, that while a lot of the scenes I write benefit from big lumps of prose, some just work better as comics. And, you know, it's my story. I make the rules.

(This is not a particularly surprising realization, I just would have expected it to happen with a more action-y scene. Ah well, we take the insights where we find 'em.)

Belated, day-after news clarification: what Murdoch's talking about on the 'signing papers' is Julia's business liscense getting revoked. Here is Murdoch talking about fixing it with a trip to l'rue, and way the hell back here is Nash asking Harvey to put the fix in.

My comic is too long and too complicated and everything takes forever, including even me finding these references.