Notes: Ugh! This strip (and
the next two as well) are perfect examples of what happens when a cartoonist
forgets what the overarching theme of his comic is ... when he loses site
of the "meta-joke." I mean, what in the world did I need a cliffhanger
for? Okay, they aren't TERRIBLE ... but they aren't really funny, either.
There is one thing I really like about this
particular strip, and that's the 3rd, 4th, and 5th panels (the middle row).
The idea of doing the strip with no borders was to have the reader actually
follow Gerry down the ladder and across the page from RIGHT to LEFT. Of
course, I knew that many readers would not get it (or rather, their training
to ALWAYS read from left to right would override the visual clues) ...
and that my execution was not nearly as compelling as it could have been.
What I'm really proud of is the fact that I managed to write the strip
so that it didn't matter whether you read it left-to-right or right-to-left
... it works either way! A subtle victory, to be sure.