Soup the Comic Strip by Alun Clewe
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Comic strip for November 14 2023.
PANEL ONE: Erlak's champion, aghast, sits across from Trevalien. ERLAK: But look, I'm a divine champion! I'm supposed to be out righting wrongs and all that, not looking after children! TREVALIEN: I didn't plan on going into child care either, you know. PANEL TWO: Close on the champion. CHAMPION: But why me in particular? PANEL THREE: Close on Trevalien TREVALIEN: Well, I've heard about your exploits... your run-ins with the cult of Xak'lar and the storm champion... PANEL FOUR: Close on Trevalien, 3/4 view TREVALIEN: ...And though you've had your share of problems, it seems to me you've demonstrated one important ability, one thing you're very good at... PANEL FIVE: Trevalien faces the skeptical champion. TREVALIEN: ...staying alive. CHAMPION: And the fact that you seem to think I'll need this "ability" does very little to motivate me to agree to this.
November 14 2023

Ugh. I keep saying that I'm going to start drawing new strips, and I keep... not doing that. Yes, I still have seven and a half months of strips from the comic's prior run, but that's not an infinite supply. I do need to start drawing new strips at some point.

I was going to draw new strips on Thursday, really I was. On Thursdays, when I'm not working during the afternoon, I attend an online draw jam associated with the Sequential Artists Workshop; most weekls lately during the draw jam I've been drawing character portraits for the Soup cast page (I haven't implemented the cast page yet, no, but I have a number of character portraits ready to put yp there when I do), but last week I figured I was finally going to start drawing new strips. I remembered having a full weeks' worth of strips (well, minus Sunday) that I'd written but hadn't drawn, and I thought I had found my notes for those strips and had them in my files; I could finally draw those strips

Well, two problems. First of all, I had... half the paper in my files where I'd written that week's strips. At some point the paper had apparently torn in half, and the other half was missing. Oh, it's still probably around here somewhere, but it wasn't in my files, and I don't know where it is.

Hm. But still, if on the half of the paper that I did have, I could make out the script and thumbnails for one of the strips, I could at least draw that strip. Except then I discovered something else that rendered the missing half-page moot.

Those strips I thought I'd written and never drawn? Turns out I did draw them after all. Not during the comic's original run starting in 2000, but in a previous abortive reboot attempt in 2010. There they are among all my comic files, drawn and ready to go.

Which means I don't have any strips written but not yet drawn after all. Which means I have to write new strips before I can draw them. And I wanted to spend the Draw Jam drawing, not writing, so I didn't draw a new strip then after all; instead I drew Cast page portraits of Jasda and Conniff.

Still, okay, I said two weeks running that I would draw new strips that week, and two weeks running I did not do so. This week I will. I will write and draw at least one new strip. Hopefully more, but at least one. Even if I have a six-month cushion at the moment, I want to get back in the habit of drawing new strips well before those six months run out.