Hello! September is almost over! Here’s this week’s strip. It’s a full pager. I thought maybe I could divide it up to 2 or 3 posts for the week, but nah.

I have the next page ready too, but will wait until next week to post, even though this took most of the month. I actually had this page done a week or so ago but was on a bit of a roll (but not really) and wanted to keep going and finish the next page. I wanted to get the layout for 44 and 45 done, and when I finished 44, I wanted to do something different with the layout and added a strip to 44 and had to redo 45 (which I’m working on). And then I can go right in to 46, the last page of Mal & Dee 2.

Originally the bottom 3 panels were going to have regular words/sentences. It was the 3rd and 5th panel where I wanted the coworkers to be talking about Sports Distraction. Then I thought “what if the whole page was like this? Because it’s one page and not 3 separate strips that make up a page, so I should make it consistent.” So, originally, the bartender asks Dee why Dee isn’t getting all worked up about Sports, and Dee goes into a 1 panel rant about his roommate shirking his duties from the job Dee got him to go play detective. To which Officer Patch swoops in, “tell me more about this roommate.” Let me know what you think of this page and the dialog balloons.

Further welcome distractions, I had some friends visit from out of town for an event, but the terrible weather ruined spage because I never turned on the computer last week. OH, and UNWELCOME distraction, but my car wouldn’t start and my cracked screen cellphone decided to stop working as I was waiting for AAA to show up to fix my car. It was quite panic inducing. And (the cell phone) totally my fault. I brought the damn thing on 2 vacations and to the beach, one rain drop gets in and it’s kaput. I spent the tiny extra amount on a screen protector and case.

BASEBALL: Well, the Giants are terrible, and ended the season badly. Sox and Cubs could have both had a better September and thus better spots in the playoffs…but hey, they’re IN. That might distract me further. I also went to a few more Cubs games this month, again delaying working on the comic.