Soup the Comic Strip by Alun Clewe
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Comic strip for August 31 2023.
PANEL ONE: Two adventurers, a man and a woman, enter a room where another man, DeVallon, sits on a throne. MAN: Who the heck are you? PANEL TWO: Close on DeVallon. DEVALLON: I am DeVallon, mighty warrior and future ruler of Taena. PANEL THREE: The adventurers face DeVallon. MAN: So _you're_ the one that slew the dread calthophacus! DEVALLON: That's right. Thanks to me the dread calthophacus is now the _dead_ calthophacus! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. PANEL FOUR: The adventurers just stare at DeVallon. PANEL FIVE: Same layout as previous panel. WOMAN: Now that's just stupid. DEVALLON: I said I was a mighty warrior. I never said anything about my skill at witty banter.
August 31 2023

Hm. When I was relettering these strips, I noticed that I'd capitalized "Calthophacus" when it was first mentioned, but I didn't capitalize it in this strip. The relettering was only to use a more legible version of the font, so I left the capitalization as is, but honestly I probably should have been consistent. It is possible to rationalize some justification for the inconsistent capitalization—perhaps it's capitalized in its original mention because the adventurers were thinking of it as a unique, awe-inspiring entity, but to DeVallon it was just an unimportant monster. But I honestly don't think I was thinking about it that deeply at the time; it was almost certainly just an oversight.

I don't actually remember for sure, but from context, I'm going to say that "Taena" is the name of the country they're in? I think it gets mentioned once more in one strip next week and then I kind of forgot about it and never used that name again.

Yes, I'm aware the perspective on the table is really wonky in the last two panels. But if you think that's bad, just wait until the October 9 strip...

Also, yeesh, I should ''not'' have used those gradients on the first panel. Gradients were a tool available in Illustrator and I apparently was determined to use them, but it looks really odd when two objects have a gradient applied and nothing else has any shading.