Soup the Comic Strip by Alun Clewe
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Comic strip for October 29 2023.
PANEL ONE: Snormar looks around in a forest. SNORMAR (thinking): All right, here I am back in the forest... Now I just have to get to the site of our first encounter... PANEL TWO: Wider view; we see that Snormar is alone in the forest surrounded only by trees. SNORMAR (thinking): Perhaps we should have chosen a meeting place easier to find... PANEL THREE: Close on Snormar. SNORMAR: Ho! Champion of Erlak! I have come for our agreed–upon battle! Art thou here? PANEL FOUR: Erlak's champion comes up behind Snormar. CHAMPION: Right here, Snormar. PANEL FIVE: Bird's eye view of the champion and Snormar. We now see that there are white circles with Xs in them painted on the grass. CHAMPION: I've taken the liberty of making some preparations to the area for the battle. SNORMAR: So be it! PANEL SIX: Close on Snormar. SNORMAR: Well, everything seems to be in order... Let us begin! PANEL SEVEN: Extreme close-up on Snormar's eyes. PANEL EIGHT: Extreme close-up on the champion's eyes. PANEL NINE: Even closer on Snormar. PANEL TEN: Even closer on the champion. PANEL ELEVEN: Close on the back of Snormar's head, with the champion visible behind him. PANEL TWELVE: Close on the back of the champion's head, with Snormar visible behind him. PANEL THIRTEEN: Snormar raises his axe. PANEL FOURTEEN: The champion raises his sword. PANEL FIFTEEN: The champion's sword cuts through a rope. PANEL SIXTEEN: Released by the rope, a branch moves upward. There's another rope also extending downward from the branch. PANEL SEVENTEEN: A rope loop previously hidden by grass rises and tightens around Snormar's ankle. PANEL EIGHTEEN: The champion rides off on the giant rat Nezhoni while Snormar dangles upside-down from a rope around his ankle, his axe and helmet lying on the ground. SNORMAR: This isn't a proper way to fight a battle! Get me down from here at once! CHAMPION: See ya, Snormar.
October 29 2023

Well, after four weeks of strips where the original Illustrator files were missing and all I had to work with were the exported bitmap files, here I finally got back to a strip where I did have the original Illustrator files available—although the strip was again in six separate pieces I had to reassemble. (As I mentioned before, the computer I used for these early strips didn't have the memory to readily handle an entire Sunday strip in a single file.) Unfortunately, that doesn't mean I don't have any more missing files to worry about. For some reason, while I have the Illustrator file for this strip, I'm missing the file for tomorrow's strip... and then I have the file for November 2, but am missing the strips for November 3-11, and so on. (Yeah, I originally said that it was only the October strips that were missing, and that I found the strips for October 29 through 31, but it turns out I was mistaken on both counts; the Illustrator files are also missing for most though not all of the November strips, and although I found the files for the October 29 and 31 strips, October 30 is still unaccounted for.) However, while I haven't looked carefully enough to be absolutely sure of this, I think I have all the Illustrator files for December 2 on, so an end is still in sight.

Now, as I've said before, those Adobe Illustrator files aren't necessarily lost forever. There's a very good chance I still have them on one of the old hard drives I have lying around. The problem is that I don't currently have a way of reading data from those old hard drives. I might be able to access them with the proper adaptor, and if that fails I could resort to a data recovery service (there's a good place I've used before only three miles from my apartment). The problem is that either of those things costs money, and money is something I do not have right now; as I think I've mentioned before, work has been very slow lately due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes (the former, of course, has ended, but the latter has not yet), and I'm in a very bad financial situation. I do expect my financial situation to improve soon, but at least at the moment I'm not only broke but pretty badly in the red.

(As I also think I've mentioned before, by the way, I fully support the striking unions. The AMPTP's behavior and its misleading statements during the strikes have been absolutely reprehensible.)

Anyway, again, I definitely do want to find those missing Illustrator files, if nothing else so I can output higher-resolution versions of the strips if I ever want to publish them in print form. But that's going to have to wait till I have the money for the adaptor and, if that fails, the data recovery. In the meantime, yeah, I've still got a lot of upcoming strips for which I'll have to work with the bitmap files.

As for the strip itself, honestly, I'm not... 100% sure what the champion's gambit was meant to accomplish that wouldn't have been accomplished just as well by his just not showing up to the meeting? It's not like this is going to stop Snormar from pursuing him. Oh well.