Six degrees of Dallas Hopkins, anyone?

I had a barbecue this weekend.  On Saturday, to be exact.  It was a girly barbecue, meaning it was planned by my girlfriend and her sister.  Well-planned, to be sure, but preparations also involved cleaning, which moved it well away from the realm of guy barbecues, where you hope the flames spewing from the grill don't set the pile of gasoline-soaked rags in the garage on fire.  Okay, that's not even a guy barbecue, unless you're a NASCAR pit crew reject (the good ones keep their garages clean).

We begin the summer storyline spectacular (with no name) today.  It'll run through the summer (thus the qualifier), and is plot oriented (thus the word "storyline").  It's not a romantic storyline, but rather an homage to several of our favorite things, using our favorite character who just won't leave the cast.  I won't spoil the fun.  We've been having a blast with it so far, and we hope you enjoy it too.

This week's incentive is another ENv1 strip, and is a good example of my over-written gags early on in the strip's life.  I really liked Becky's facial expressions in this one.  So vote, and see a cute piece of history! 

~Matt

~*~

As you can see from these early strips, Becky was originally the one with glasses. In version 3, the glasses were moved over to Mike, although Becky does wear contacts. This is because in the minimal research I did for the comic, I learned that skunks are nearsighted. Her early design had her sporting the white face and belly of a "cartoon mask", ala Pepe le'Pew. While this made it easier to draw and read her expressions, I decided later to go with a more true to nature coloring, where she's completely black furred except her stripes and her hair. Becky lost her glasses because of this, as drawing the frames against her black face fur proved difficult. Mike lost his Siamese "nose point" for design reasons as well, as it made him look like he had a Fred Flinstone style beard. Matt and I explain this away by making him half-Siamese.

~Rich 

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