Now, since I was working on this strip so gradually, without (originally) a specific deadline, I think I may have gone a bit overboard indulging myself with details. See all those diverse characters appearing in this strip? I have no plans for any character in this strip to ever appear again. (With the obvious exception of Erlak, of course.) This is in contrast to the October 1 strip, where I intentionally stuck in some characters I intended to play a much larger role in the strip later, as something of a sneak preview of their later appearance. No, this strip involves many, many more characters than that one, and yet every last one of them is a one-shot character designed only for this strip. That's not to say that one or more of them may not end up reappearing someday anyway... it's entirely possible that if I get to a future strip or storyline where I need some sort of scholar character, I may use someone from this strip. (In fact, come to think of it, there's just such a storyline coming up... though when I say "coming up", I mean coming up soon after the point I left off in the strip's original run, which means not till June.) But I didn't design the characters here with the intention of using them later, or with any further purpose in mind. They were all just made up for this single strip. Was that really a good use of time? Eh... well, I do rather like the way the strip turned out, so I'm hesitant to say I shouldn't have done it. All I'm saying is, don't expect this level of detail often.

Now, I still have next Thursday's strip to finish—it's another one that I skipped over during the initial run, and it's not as far along as this one was. But it's a much easier strip to draw (much fewer characters, for one thing, and no new characters to design), and hopefully I'll get started on finishing it earlier than I did this one (which is to say, earlier than the morning of the day it's supposed to be up). So if all goes well it's actually going to be up on time...

Oh—you may notice I've once again taken out the blurb up top about the strip being drawn nine years ago, the art being worse, et cetera, et cetera, and replaced it with a notice about the site having broken links. For one thing, for this strip in particular obviously wasn't drawn nine years ago—it was started many years ago (December 1, 2001, to be exact), but was then worked on a bit at a time at intervals (very long intervals) over the following years, with the last bits being finished not until, well, today. So saying it was drawn nine years ago would be, at this point, quite plainly false. But besides that, I think we're past the point in the early strips where the art is truly mortifying... sure, I'm not totally happy with the art in the strips from here on out, but it's not embarrassing enough to warrant the disclaimer. So... that's that. Now, hopefully relatively soon I'll get the rest of the site working, and I can leave the page without any blurb at the top at all.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. I said a few days ago that I'd run across a strip I liked called Bobwhite, but didn't remember where it was I found it? I figured it out; I'd seen the link to it here. For whatever that's worth.

Anyway, enough (probably more than enough) of my rambling! Enjoy the first new strip to go up since the relaunch! (Well, mostly new; a barely started in-progress version was up at one point to illustrate "The Making of Soup".) Now, tomorrow, back to strips that were drawn eight years ago... (Yes, eight; at this point during the strip's original run, I was apparently running exactly one year behind...)