Today's Cul de Sac, August 26 2010

In the rough for this strip the text for Loris's middle balloon ran on and on with the words getting smaller and smaller and it looked, I thought, real funny. But when drawing the final it became obvious that all those words wouldn't stand any reduction and it just looked messy and self-indulgent, so it got curtailed into shorter and less funny form. That's pretty much all these daily posts will be from now on: evasive explanations of how that day's strip was really funny until it got drawn.

In answer to the many, many queries I've received from both of you, yes, Loris and Andre will be in the strip from now on. Not every day! Andre's too big and Loris wouldn't hold still. I've been trying to expand Petey's end of the strip for a while to give him more room to socialize, and I like these two just fine and they're both fun to draw. Expanding a comic strip is always a dicey business as strips are fragile little soap bubble things, so I won't push it too far and pop it. Introducing all of Dill's brothers, for example, would tear the whole space-time continuum to tatters. Though that might be good for a one-time laugh.