Planespotting
Planespotting
[Cueball and a man with a hat is seen in silhouette standing on the ground looking towards the sky. A fixed wing aircraft can be seen in the sky, also in silhouette.] Man with hat: What's That Airplane? Cueball:Oh, that's a Boeing Q404 twin-engine quad-band MIG-380 hybrid dual-wield Mk. IVII Turbodiesel 797 Hydroplane.
[Caption below the panel:] I've always assumed I'm one of those people who knows a lot about planes, but I've never actually checked.

Cueball and a man with a hat are out planespotting , or aircraft spotting , a hobby where tracking the movement of aircraft allows plane fans to see as many different types of planes as possible. A knowledgeable spotter would just by the silhouette and maybe the engine sound of the plane be able to tell what type of plane it is, and may be rather proud of the fact, if they can tell this before one of the other spotters.
The plane in the comic is most likely a Bombardier Q400 , a twin-engine regional turboprop with a T-tail as depicted.
The man with the hat asks Cueball to identify the airplane flying overhead. Cueball (or Randall qua the caption), who "assumes" he knows a lot about planes gives a long, nonsensical answer, proving that he does not. As mentioned in the caption he never actually checked if what he thought he knew was fact or fiction. As it turns out it is mainly fiction, but of course with some reference to real planes or vehicles. Due to the fact the characters are drawn in silhouette it is impossible to determine whether the character with the hat is Black Hat or White Hat or some other character.
In the title text the concept of hydroplane is mixed up with other concepts, none of which has anything to do with airplanes:
Only three weeks prior to this comic, 1660: Captain Speaking was released only with a drawing of a plane in the air, where the captain eventually finds out that his plane is probably a Boeing. Planespotting was later a part of 1910: Sky Spotters .
[Cueball and a man with a hat is seen in silhouette standing on the ground looking towards the sky. A fixed wing aircraft can be seen in the sky, also in silhouette.] Man with hat: What's That Airplane? Cueball:Oh, that's a Boeing Q404 twin-engine quad-band MIG-380 hybrid dual-wield Mk. IVII Turbodiesel 797 Hydroplane.
[Caption below the panel:] I've always assumed I'm one of those people who knows a lot about planes, but I've never actually checked.
