Soup the Comic Strip by Alun Clewe
Comic strip for August 23 2023.
PANEL ONE: Two adventurers, a man and a woman, explore a dungeon; they leap between stone platforms, dodging bursts of flame. (At least, that's what the substandard art is intended to convey.) WOMAN: You know, I asked old Jarum what this place used to be, and he said it was originally built as a crypt for some ancient nobleman named Irchalos. PANEL TWO: The man cautiously opens a door; the woman stands behind him. WOMAN: Then, years, later, it was taken over by a tribe of naldeks. They added some of their own tunnels, built quite a colony here. But something happened, some plague or something I guess, or maybe superstition about a curse by Irchalos, and they moved out. PANEL THREE: Close-up on the woman. WOMAN: And then later, believe it or not, the place was actually used as a casino! Jarum says they affixed their biggest roulette wheel right to the top of Irchalos's sarcophagus! Which leads one to wonder... PANEL FOUR: The two walk through the room beyond the door. WOMAN: Does it count as Irchalos spinning in his grave if the grave itself is spinning? MAN: It leads _me_ to wonder if you're ever going to shut up!
August 23 2023

Uh... yeah, twenty-plus years after writing this strip, I'm... really kind of uncomfortable with the guy's line in the last panel. It's kind of mean-spirited, and I wish I hadn't included it.

None of this detailed history of the dungeon will ever become important in any way.

So, I said yesterday I was going to implement the strip-specific text (like this commentary) being read from a MySQL database instead of being hardcoded? Yeah, I didn't do that yet. I figured maybe that shouldn't be my biggest priority, given that it's something that won't be at all noticeable to users, and the way it's currently hardcoded works well enough for now. It won't keep working indefinitely, and I still do need to get the site working with a database eventually, but there are other things that I should probably do first.

Like set up a forum! Which I did! The forum link works now! (The Archive and Cast links still don't; I'll get to those.) The forum is ugly right now and at some point I should see about customizing its appearance, but it's there! Also there are no posts there right now because it's just been set up, and there won't be any posts there for the foreseeable future because nobody knows about this comic!

Another thing I ought to prioritize is making this site mobile-friendly, because right now it absolutely is not. It looks terrible on a cell phone (or on any screen narrower than 800 pixels). I'll try to get that done before tomorrow, but no promises.