So like, Mike purposefully had no reason to be alive again in Shortpacked! after he graphically died in It’s Walky!.   I just wanted a higher body count for the IW! finale, and thought it’d be funny if he just showed up alive again with no explanation.  I never planned to explain it.

But with Dumbing of Age a few years old, and me purposefully writing Amber and Mike out of Shortpacked!’s main cast so that I didn’t have to write them frequently in both strips simultaneously, I figured, sure, why not, let’s cross that T and dot that I as I usher them offstage.

So here you go.  Joyce conspired behind the scenes to get Mike resurrected off the radar.  The government wasn’t gonna let Rosenthal Industries use up their time regrowing a Mike Warner, but a potential competitor might if Joyce threw them a bone.  And Mike saved her life, so it was the least she could do.

It was something I made up after the fact, but I think it works.