Skin Horse

Shaenon: Continuing from last week’s thumbnail exhibit (and doesn’t that sound delightful?), here’s what a page of SH strips looks like before inking. The drawing of Unity at top right is so clean because I liked her expression in the thumbnail sketch so much I just lightboxed it onto the final.

I wish I’d kept the thumbnail for the second strip, because I wrote about a half-dozen alternate final lines for Unity, like “Oh boy! Free towels!” and “Oh boy! A complimentary copy of USA Today!”

Okay, one more page of sketches for the road. My friend Konstantin, who has been a really good sport about becoming the namesake of a hilarious cartoon Russian, challenged me to draw Julie at three different ages. So here she is at her current age, ten years younger, and ten years older. Also, for some reason, Tip eating a banana.

Sorry about the food stains. We were at this Turkish meat-pie place. Later Konstantin drew Spider-Man in a Speedo. It was that kind of night.

And, yes, it’s kind of unfortunate that Young Julie is about to shoot her oblivious future self.

Channing: One of the frustrating things about being a writer exclusively is that you can’t just knock off a quick short story on your placemat while you’re waiting for your food to come. Well, you can, but it’s just not the same, y’know?