Soup the Comic Strip by Alun Clewe
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Comic strip for December 3 2023.
PANEL ONE: The champion and Maiz ride the giant rat Nezhoni through a forest. NEZHONI: So you got another message. Great. You're just Mr. Popularity, aren't you? PANEL TWO: The champion starts to open the message. CHAMPION: Um... I think this is only the second message I've received since you've been with me. NEZHONI: Yeah, well, that's two more than I've gotten. PANEL THREE: The champion reads the message. NEZHONI: All right, so what's this message say? PANEL FOUR: Closer on the champion, still reading the message. CHAMPION: It's from the mayor of Landorf. He says he has a secret mission for me, and he wants us to meet him at a certain location in the forests outside town. PANEL FIVE: The champion puts the message into the bag on his belt. NEZHONI: Oh, yeah, right. Smells like a trap to me. PANEL SIX: Close on the champion. CHAMPION: Oh, come on. You said the same thing about Trevalien's letter, remember? PANEL SEVEN: Wider view of them riding through the forest. CHAMPION: And Trevalien didn't have any hostile intentions, did he? It turned out all he wanted to do was talk to me. PANEL EIGHT: Closer on the champion. CHAMPION: Well, okay, that and manipulate me into taking a seven–year–old boy off his hands and taking care of him for an indeterminate length of time... PANEL NINE: Even (slightly) closer on the champion, now raising an eyebrow in thought. PANEL TEN: They continue to ride through the forest. CHAMPION: Okay, so, actually, I guess you were kind of right about that one... MAIZ: Hey!
December 3 2023

Huh. So remember what I said a few months back about drawing the old Sunday strips in six parts and assembling the rendered images later in Photoshop because my computer back then didn't have enough memory to handle the Illustrator file for the whole strip at once? Okay, you probably don't remember that, but I linked to it above so you can read it, though that's unnecessary since I pretty much just explained it again anyway. Well, regardless, the Illustrator files for the November 12 and November 19 strips were not split up like that, so I figured some time between when I drew the October 29 strip (which was) and the November 12 strip during the comic's original run I must have gotten a new computer. Except that the Illustrator file for today's strip was split into six parts so... I guess not? I was thinking maybe the November 12 and November 19 strips might have been less memory-intensive for some reason, but come to think of it, there's a more likely explanation. As I mentioned in a commentary last month, during the comic's original run I skipped some of the Sunday strips entirely and filled them in much later, and I'm guessing that was the case with those two strips... and indeed the last modified date of the Illustrator files bears that out.

That probably wasn't very interesting. Sorry.

Also, remember that bit I quoted from my commentary during the strip's previous run about the matter of where the champion gets his money, and that presumably he got it from going on various adventures, and that most of his adventures are successful and we only see the ones that go wrong? Because, given that this strip establishes that he never received any messages we didn't see, apparently I sure didn't remember that! (Okay, that commentary was from a later 2014 rerun of the strip, not from its original run, so I hadn't thought about that during the strip's original run, I guess.) Of course, I suppose it's still possible he has gone on adventures we didn't see but he found out about them by other means than messages delivered to him by courier.

Also, remember what I said about a week ago about discovering that I had drawn some background details that were hidden by a dialogue balloon? (Again, no, you probably don't.) Well, out of curiosity I checked the last panel here to see if I'd drawn the parts behind the dialogue balloons, and... yes, again, I did. Why did I do that? As far I can tell that panel background isn't copied from a previous panel, so... oh, wait, on closer examination, yes it is. The hidden part of the background is copied from three panels earlier and moved slightly to the left relative to the characters (to represent that they've moved forward during this time). Never mind. Mystery solved. (For this strip, anyway; still not sure why I drew the hidden background details in that earlier one.)