Here it is! The first brand new Soup strip I've drawn since... 2011! (As previously mentioned, the strip that originally ran here was an April Fools' comic swap strip, which I didn't want to rerun for reasons explained in the February 18 commentary.) And I actually got it up on time! Well, okay, technically it was about a minute late, but what are the chances that anyone was checking the site between midnight and 12:01? It was by no means a sure thing that that was going to happen. I kind of... didn't get around to drawing it until the day before it was supposed to go up, and I was working that day so there didn't seem to be much chance that I would have time to get it done. But then the work canceled for the day due to the weather, so I had the whole day to work on the strip! And of course, being me, I procrastinated and didn't actually start it until the evening, leaving myself far too little time. But I got it done anyway! It's up! I actually finished a new strip!
Not that you can necessarily tell there was such a time gap between this strip and the surrounding strips, which were drawn in 2005. You'd think in more than eighteen years my artistic abilities would have significantly improved, but apparently not. Honestly, I don't spend nearly as much time practicing drawing as I should, if I really want to get better. It's hard, because while I do want to work on my artistic skills, there are loads of other things I want to do too, and, well, time is all too finite a resource. Hm. In particular, I'm not sure Nizini really looks right in some of the panels, although I did recently redesign her (just slightly, only the eyes, really), and she was always one of the characters I had the hardest time drawing to begin with, so... maybe it's not a surprise she didn't come out perfect here.
Oh, and besides my art, another thing that hasn't gotten better in the last eighteen years? My capacity for conciseness. Ye gads this strip is wordy. (And the text is probably a bit too small to accommodate all those words, harming its legibility; sorry.) I have got to work on... reining in my loquacity.
Anyway! I have a lot more strips to do if I want to keep my buffer up and not run out of strips in June, but hey, I got a new strip done! My first one in almost thirteen years! That's something, right?