Perhaps you have been wondering why this comic is entitled “Love Among the Lampreys.” Perhaps it has been keeping you up at night, a question nibbling insistently at the blackest bit of your subconscious. Perhaps you thought I was not a very good titler.

It might all be true!

But at the very least, you now can see the comic that inspired my choice. I probably still cannot explain the subterranean mental acrobatics that made me believe the title was applicable to the work as a whole. But it amuses me, and if I have to attribute my selection to Surrealist automatism, I can live with that in this case.

I also tracked down the actual royal figure who is supposed to have died of “a surfeit of lampreys” (an anecdotal tidbit of history that used to amuse me a great deal in high school. See: my About page). Apparently it was Henry I, and I’ve been a bit loose with the particulars. Poor Henry! Kind of!