Soup the Comic Strip by Alun Clewe
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Comic strip for April 10 2024.
PANEL ONE: Drv'dxx looks to the side as Gantranis faces him across the bar. GANTRANIS: You know, Drv'dxx, talking like this, I'm getting to feel like we're special friends. DRV'DXX: Uh... great... PANEL TWO: Close on Drv'dxx. DRV'DXX: And as your “special friend”, I'd like to give you a drink that'll have an effect on you unlike anything you've had before. PANEL THREE: Bird's eye view of Drv'dxx and Gantranis as Drv'dxx hands her a goblet. GANTRANIS: Ooh! What does it do? PANEL FOUR: Close on Drv'dxx DRV'DXX: It'll give you hours of blissful unconsciousness! PANEL FIVE: Close on Gantranis, who drinks from the goblet. GANTRANIS: Well, bottoms up! PANEL SIX: Gantranis looks her lip, her eyes half-closed. PANEL SEVEN: Gantranis falls over backward. SFX: THUD PANEL EIGHT: Drv'dxx turns away. DRV'DXX: Blissful for ME, at any rate...
April 10 2024

Yes! Great news! No, I haven't drawn more new strips yet (I really need to get on that), but great news nonetheless.

So remember how I mentioned in previous commentaries that I was missing the original Illustrator files for a number of the early strips, and only had the final, screen-resolution bitmap files? Which, as I also said, wasn't a huge problem for putting the strips back online, but would be a problem when and if I ever wanted to release any sort of print copies of the comic, in which case if I hadn't found the Illustrator files by then I'd have to redraw the strips in question? I also said, however, that it was possible I would find the files, because I may still have them on one of the many old hard drives I had lying around that I didn't currently have an easy way to read data from?

Well, as you've probably guessed by now from the specific facts I chose to recap in the previous paragraph, I did find a way to read one of those old hard drives—and the missing Illustrator files were there! Okay, I haven't actually gone through and meticulously checked that they're all there, but at a glance they seem to be. So if I ever do release a print volume of Soup strips, I won't have to redraw all those strips after all.

This also means that at some point I ought to go through and, uh, re-remaster all those old strips, relettering them from the now recovered Illustrator files rather than from the bitmap files. But that's not a high priority. It's something I'll get to, yes, but I think it's more urgent that I draw new strips before my buffer runs out. Which, again, is something I really need to get on...

On an unrelated note, I had apparently never bothered to create quotation marks for Drv'dxx's dialogue font, nor a bold M, so when I needed those for this strip, I... kludged them in by carefully positioning commas and expanding a non-bold M, respectively, rather than make them as part of the font, which will be not at all helpful when and if I need them again. Oh well.