Wow, okay, I... may have encountered a bit of a problem.
So obviously I want to keep the strip updating on time and to get ahead so I can start making new strip, so yesterday I opened a whole bunch of old strips to reletter them and get them ready to go. I got through all the strips up to September 17, and then figured I may as well get a bit further ahead and went to open the next two weeks' worth of strips, from September 18 to October 1. And I made an unfortunate discovery.
The file for the October 1 strip is missing. I have the final bitmap image, but the editable Adobe Illustrator file is not there. Moreover, it's not just the October 1 strips. All the strips for the entire month of October were missing.
Now, this, uh, okay, this wasn't good. If I wanted to update and rerun all the old strips, I kind of needed those files. Could they be in a different directory? Searching around, I was able to find some of them, but only October 29 through 31. (And, oddly, one panel of the strip from October 8.) This means that (not counting that one panel) there are still four weeks of strips that are nowhere to be found.
Now, all hope is not lost. Okay, they're not in the directory with the other strips, or anywhere else apparently on the hard drives I'm currently using. But this isn't the computer I originally drew the strips on. And my tendencies to never throw anything away may actually work out to my benefit this time. I still have my last two desktops—my previous desktop I now have plugged into my TV and I pretty much only use it to watch streaming channels, but it's still functional—although it's unlikely the missing comics are on it. The desktop before that, where it's a little more likely that the strips might be, I also still have, and I can (and intend to) plug that in and see if it still works and what might be on the drive. And if they aren't there, I still have a whole passel of old hard drives from previous computers where they might be. I don't have any immediate easy way of reading the data from those drives, but I can figure out something, and if I have to I can turn to a data recovery service. (Although I can't do that right now, given that at the moment money is still very tight thanks to the limited work due to the strikes.) There's a good chance the missing files are on one of those drives somewhere.
Even if they are, though, it's by no means a sure thing I can find them before October. But if I don't, I still have options. Again, it's just the Illustrator files that are missing—the final bitmap versions of the strips are still there. If I have to, I can import those files into Illustator, draw the new lettering and any other needed changes over the old images, and then reëxport them as bitmaps. Regardless, this isn't going to cause a delay in the comic's updating.
That's not a permanent solution, though, because, again, I may want someday to print a book of these comics, and I can't do that with the screen-resolution bitmap files. But it will buy me more time to try to find the original Illustrator files. As a last resort, if the files truly can't be found, I guess I can redraw the images if I absolutely have to, but I hope it doesn't come to that.
Anyway, like I said, this isn't going to cause any delay in the comic's updates. But it is quite vexing, nonetheless. It's frustrating that I apparently lost track of some of the original comic files, although given that it's been twenty-three years and given my usual level of disorganization, I guess maybe it's kind of surprising that I didn't misplace more of them.