Original Commentary

Brisbane's line in the second panel got rewritten a lot. Isabel was mildly annoyed that she had to design Brisbane's character a new outfit, but it kinda needed to be done to show how under-prepared he is. And no, the counter isn't a running feature. It'd take up too much space and require me to figure out the timing - Terrence

Modern Commentary
The knapsack-on-a-stick was a novelty weapon from a few events ago. Brisbane just has really lousy gear.

Also, the technical term for such a thing is a bindle. I'm still not sure which term is funnier - Terrence