No, this is a real fruit. Have you ever had it? It’s delicious, but I can certainly understand why the name might be a little off-putting. Still, it certainly could have been worse, as evidenced by our cheerfully rotund friend above.

Did you notice anything different about today’s comic? Besides the fact that this is the most we’ve seen of Chain-Link Jefferson in like, a year? This marks the first time since September 2007 that I didn’t do any shading. I’ve been spending a lot of extra time shading the comic over the past year or so, so it pretty much became a force of habit. I draw the art, I color it, then I take it all into Photoshop and start shading. Well, a little while back, I brought the art into Photoshop, put a bold black line around it, and said…now wait a minute. I’ve been spending probably an extra hour per strip adding shadows n’ such, and I actually think it looks better and cleaner without them. To my eye, it looks more “cartoony.” Looking back at the strips with shadows in them, I now think they’re really a little distracting! Of course, your opinion may vary! If you don’t like the new sans-shadow style, I urge you to sit down and write a long, well thought-out e-mail, tell me exactly what you don’t like about it, and then send it to trash@george-comics.com.

Zing!!