And how many rules did I try to break in this one?

Hints can be found in the transcript of Adam Smithee and friends’ podcast on How not to do a Webcomic (or something along that line).

For those of you wondering about the comment in panel 3, it’s a reference to the “yelling bird” from Jeph Jacques’ webcomic Questionable Content, an example episode can be found here (viewer discretion is advised).