Soup the Comic Strip by Alun Clewe
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Comic strip for October 27 2023.
PANEL ONE: Close on Erlak. ERLAK: You called me, my champion? PANEL TWO: Erlak stands in front of his champion, who is mounted on Nezhoni, the giant rat. CHAMPION: Nezhoni here says it was the rat goddess who persuaded Xak'lar to let us go, not you. Is that true? ERLAK: Well, technically, yes. PANEL THREE: Close on the champion, with Erlak in the foreground. CHAMPION: You mean you're not even as powerful as a _rat goddess_? This is ridiculous! ERLAK: Hey, Tfylaon's no more powerful than I am... at least, not much... PANEL FOUR: Close on the champion. CHAMPION: Then why is it she could persuade Xak'lar to let us go, and you couldn't? PANEL FIVE: Erlak stands in front of the champion, looking slightly downcast. ERLAK: Well, Xak'lar's got kind of a crush on her... CHAMPION: Okay, for some reason, I find that immensely disturbing...
October 27 2023

Okay, this is another comic that I did tweak a little aside from the relettering. In the third panel, the champion's eyeline was wrong; he was looking up and to the right, and he seemed to be looking off to the side above Erlak's head. I moved his pupils so he's looking in the right direction.

Although I think I know why the eyeline was off, and it's a symptom of a different problem. With the current eyeline, he looks as if he's looking down, as if he's at a higher elevation than Erlak. He's not supposed to be; sure, he's higher up in the panel than Erlak, but that's supposed to be because we're looking at them from an overhead angle. However, the perspective isn't drawn correctly for that to come across. Apparently I thought at the time that it was worse to have him looking down than it was to have him not appear to be looking at Erlak, but now I think that's not correct; it just looked really weird having him staring beyond Erlak's right shoulder, and having him seem to be looking down at Erlak is the lesser of two evils. In principle, I could, of course, just redraw the whole panel, but eh, that's a more drastic change than I really want to make to these old comics. Aside from the relettering, I want to leave them in their original state as much as possible, only making adjustments if there's something really egregious. (Having the champion's eyeline be over Erlak's head struck me as pretty darn egregious. Seriously, it looked really wrong.)