BIG Bugs

The inaugural occurrence for Interior Alaska: the first to emerge of the season are the entomological equivalent of Blackhawks - big, lumbering monsters that have somehow managed to survive the winter by freakin' hibernating. Before the swarms of Apaches arrive after the first hatching (quantity versus quality), these mosquitoes can actually be grabbed out of the air mid-flight, when one is, oh say, in the outhouse for example. First draft of the panel included a scan of the original pencil doodle used as the painting pasted on the wall, but it kept getting read visually as another window, so I opted to swipe a favorite oil painting from my g-friend, Diane Hunt's "Cornfields - Iowa" especially since it's literally looks so out of place.

And speaking of BIG - every once in a while it's way cool to open up the Sunday edition and see how much the layout department was hurting for space-filling content. Not having any set parameters as far as panel size is concerned can be a mixed blessing: while the relative freedom to use different formats (ex: horizontal, vertical, multi-panel etc.) is liberating (esp. compared to the horrid syndicated feature real-estate) there's the occasional postal-stamp-sized versions, or the opposite extreme, getting printed actually the same size or slightly larger than the original dimensions, which often tends to pull the drawn elements apart a tad bit too far.
But in all humility, it ain't the size of the panel that counts, it's the size of the laugh.