Whew.  What a mother of a strip this was.  For those of your keeping track at home, that’s 21 panels there.

This marks Swifty’s return to the story after an absence of about 18 srips.  I wanted it to be huge and Swifty playing frustrated is just fun.  Originally, the last panel was silent—no joke.  It was only while I was drawing it that I came up with the punchline.   I love the last line I eventually came up with, but what do you think?  Would it have been better silent?

The one aspect of this strip that I spent the most time on was the color in the background.  I had 3 options that I felt kinda’ sorta’ approached acceptability and chose the one I could live with without too much involuntary wretching.

And then, a day later, I trashed them all and went with the pale yellow that is in the strip now.

I don’t know what it is about this strip that made the color so difficult, but it was the hardest time I’ve ever had coloring a strip.  I think most of the blame can be laid at the feet of the Blue Screen of Death (as it is so lovingly called by PC devotees) that Swifty is looking at.  It had to be that shade of blue and that shade of blue is not something we’ve seen in SF before.