January 15th, 2000 -- Philosophy at El Guapo's

Welcome to Alas.

Usually, the Babbler portion of the strip is a daily blog-type thing chatting about that day's artwork and general goings-on in the life of the artist. In earlier versions of this site, Babbler wasn't tied to the strip-- you saw the current strip's news no matter what day you were looking at. With the new system I'm able to keep the right news with the right strip, and where those Babblers have been saved (almost all of them, really), I'll be sure to have them up.

But really, how many times can you read, "Sorry, the strip was late," without rolling your eyes? So, I'm going to be a little indulgent and occasionally add a little director's track style commentary to the Babbler. Of course, some of these I drew so long ago that I can only guess what I was thinking at the time...

The panels in Alas were originally presented in a vertical 1x4 format, just like the Japanese comic strips I'd been reading heavily at the time (namely, 4-Komu's bizarre Ruri-chan strips). Later I decided that having to scroll to see the punchline was a pain, and moved to the 2x2 format you see here. I reformatted most of the early strips, but not all (as you will eventually notice).

It's never stated, but I like to think that this first strip takes place at Guapo's in Tenleytown. Damn good frozen margaritas there.

2008-04-23

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