In 1965, German collector Peter Ludwig asked Castelli, what price Lichtenstein might accept to sell M-Maybe from his personal collection.

[2] Eckhard Schneider describes this single-frame style of art as stills suddenly halting a narrative associated with young women's predicaments, noting that "The private tone of the words increases the paintings’ aura of authenticity, like verbal snap-snots – an aspect especially apparent in the hesitantly voiced ‘M-Maybe’."

However, Lichtenstein idealizes the appearance with graphic tension that separates the emotional subject matter from the apparent poise of the depiction.

[4] After 1963, Lichtenstein's comics-based women "look hard, crisp, brittle, and uniformly modish in appearance, as if they all came out of the same pot of makeup."

[5] This is an example of Lichtenstein humorously presenting a subject that might be crowded out in a newspaper with a sort of ironic self-awareness that relies on the difference between art and the rest of the world.