Now, I’ve gotten a few questions regarding Pumpkin in this story, and let me just say now that she does NOT know that “Danny” is Dandy as a little kid. As is pointed out here, she clearly notices the similarities but would never make the leap that the puppy she’s talking to IS Dandy. Really, how many times have YOU run into child versions of adults you know?
That said, this is an important strip. At the end of the last storyline Pumpkin was in, I ended it by having her rattle off most of Dandy’s WORST qualities only to recoil at the realization that she actually LIKED him. The implication there was that, her being so straight-laced and proper, she was attracted to Dandy as a scoundrel. It seemed like a fun idea at the time and I thought about having the two of them hesitantly become a couple. But in the end, I realized how overdone that idea was. Heck, it’s a part of Maryweather’s attraction to him as it is, so it never came up again.
This time, I found myself struggling to attach some kind of meaning to this storyline after a few strips in and finding myself bored with just playing up Dandy as a prankster… another idea that’s becoming stale. This storyline originally didn’t include Pumpkin at all, and was originally going to end with Dandy pulling a prank at Disney World (Or Our stand in: The Enchanted Kingdom) so LARGE in scope, that it would garner national media attention and force Dandy to re-evaluate his lifestyle if only to escape prosecution. Much of the same results can come out of THIS twist. Pumpkin can see right through him, and likes the REAL Dandy… the Dandy that Dandy doesn’t want anyone to know even exists.
