Comic Caper, Holiday Edition

For this Swipeback Saturday wallow down memory lane, I need to explain that when these next episodes of "The Funny Paper Caper" appeared in December and January of 1983-1984, Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" was in the middle of a 22-month hiatus. At the time, it wasn't clear whether the comic strip, having been moved to the editorial page of some newspapers, was going to come back.

Fed up with drawing all those soundproofing dimples in the wall of the interrogation room, I switched to one of Trudeau's tricks and set the next episode outside the building its characters were in. It was the last episode of the year, and ran on a little longer than the previous thirteen had. If you're not in the habit yet, you'll definitely want to Click To Embiggen.

In the new year, it became increasingly clear that I would need to move the plot along in order to complete the story by the end of the school year. Kind of like Davos rushing to fetch Gendry from King's Landing so they could join Jon Snow's Magnificent Seven racing north from Dragonstone to the Wall while, presumably, Daenerys, Cersei and the Dothraki paused to get their hair done.

A purely technical note here: in the Ranger's Christmas gift exchange, news editor Bob Kiesling gave me a Koh-i-noor rapidograph set, which I began using for some of the drawing of this strip in the new year. The technical pens produce a steady, uniform line in india ink, but they clog up and become useless if you're not assiduous about cleaning them. I did find them superior to felt-tip pens for lettering; but sometimes a uniform line is not what you want, so I have never given up on hawk and crow tip pens.

On the topic of moving the plot along, I gotta post some of these midweek, or I'll have to cancel some retrospectives of other people's work I've had planned. Stay tuned.