I don’t know why I felt the need to put quotes around “fourth wall”, but I did, and hey, I just did it again.  Must be something in the air.  I’ll start off with a technical note for those of you who may not be familiar with the fourth wall.  The wall is the barrier between the world of the artist and the world of the art.  It’s known as “breaking the fourth wall” when you get all crazy and blur that barrier, like when actors do asides to the audience (slightly, though that is conventionally accepted), or when comic characters know they’re characters; or even worse, go and hunt down their “real” counterparts to “have words”.  (Man, I’m quotes-happy tonight.)  In comics, it’s something that is done, though it really isn’t considered very high class.  Greg Dean uses it fairly often, or he has in the past, and Tatsuya downright mocked the third wall itself, like, to its face.  Dude’s got guts, but even so he didn’t have to leave that particular comic up for over a month.  So, breaking the fourth wall isn’t considered a “refined” part of the art, and some people would scoff outright at this churlish display of comic-writing knavery.

But those people can just … well, shush.  I mean, at LEAST you got art this time.  I figure comic strip audiences are distractable.  Look, shiny colors! and then one can get away with anything.  I mean, just read those signs in panel two.  I’m fucking clever, dudes, and if you don’t even know what I’m talking about, well then, honestly, it would just take too damn long to explain.

All that stuff aside, Theo was concerned about the artistic layout of this strip, but I think it turned out wonderfully.  Honestly, I LIKE this strip, and as a writer it’s always significant when you can honestly say that you like how something in which you played a large part in the creative process turns out well.

That sentence was a prepositional catastrophe.  I’m tired and should sleep.  Enjoy the comic, and tell Theo how awesome you think it is (I can see Amos swooping in already), because it is, and he is, after all, a sensitive artist.  He’s even taking art classes now, so he may be particularly vulnerable for a time as his work is laid bare before the eyes of countless strangers. 

Oh yeah, that’s been the case since October.  Nevermind then.  You should ask him about the art classes though.  Theo in an art class!?  If you only knew ….

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