Ivan Has His Ups and Downs

This strip springs from my fascination with adverbs like 'up, down, in, out, over', when used with an indirect or irrational meaning.  For instance people may say, 'Let's go up to Florida', when they are actually saying this in New York.  Or they may say, 'I'm going to beat up your friend".  In this case, I doubt that your friend is going up.  More likely he's going down.