Today, while working on a completely unrelated commission, I started thinking about Inspector Gadget. I loved the show as a kid, but at the same time it always bothered me that he never solved any cases on his own. Other bumbling law enforcers like Inspector Clouseau and Maxwell Smart (played by Don Adams who voiced Gadget) still managed to get the job done without the aid of dogs and children. So why not just cut out the middleman and outfit his niece Penny with cybernetics, amirite?

Of course it begs the question "why?" I'm almost ashamed to admit that for a split second, my brain snapped into the clichéd take a children's cartoon and create a dark fanfic mode. The whole Gadget family would suffer some horrible accident, and Penny would survive and volunteer to take up her uncle's mantle. She would manage to be cute and bubbly, yet switch to self-pitying, emo narration about giving up the life she once knew at the drop of a hat. (Take note: she displayed neither of those personalities in the show.) The only thing that keeps this from becoming a bleedman project is that Penny is wearing pants, effectively crushing all hopes for gratuitous upskirt shots.

But forget all that, and enjoy my cute drawing. Oh, and once you start doing anything IG-related, good luck getting that theme song out of your head.