planning. By shifting her focus to the subtler fields of evil, such as law and politics, she soon grows into an effective villainess in her own right. Despite a generally upbeat personality, Mell is actually an extremely dangerous person, and she is shown to have only one shoulder angel (whereas Helen and Dave each have several). All it does is quietly chant "Kill... kill... kill..." in her ear. Dave Davenport Helen's computer technician, who is recruited directly from Vassar College's graduation ceremony to fix a malfunctioning doomsday machine. Bespectacled, beflanneled, and bearded, and 6'1" when he isn't slouching, Dave Davenport is an unrepentant geek who generally expects the worst. Working at Narbonic Labs does little to correct this pessimism. For much of the strip's run, Dave is a chain-smoker, but his attempts to change his past, present and future when one of Helen's experiments make him "come unstuck in time" result in his never having begun to smoke. This excursion to the past also offers Dave an opportunity to grapple with his own shortcomings, and thus gain the confidence he needs to approach Helen romantically. The romantic tension between Helen and Dave, and the conflict that results from Helen's attempts to experiment upon him unawares, provide a continuous story arc over most of the strip's run. Dave is eventually revealed to be a latent mad genius. Helen in fact suspected this during their first meeting when he fixed her doomsday device within minutes. She became sure of his potential when he successfully "repaired" a broken "death ray" that was in fact the console from a rusted mail-sorting machine. She then spent the next several years studying the development of his abilities by subjecting him to various experiments and continuous on-the-job testing (giving him plenty of junk to repair and telling him it's broken super-science gear). The final two story arcs revolve around the consequences of his mind finally snapping. Artie, a.k.a. RT-5478 A superintelligent gerbil, created by Helen to do her taxes (although the author says that is merely an excuse and the real reason is that it would be cute), with the I.Q. of 1.17 Stephen Hawkings. Artie tends to be the outsider of the group, whether by virtue of being the lone voice of sanity among a crew of obsessives, the lone good soul among a crew of the wicked, or just the lone gerbil among a crew