Fear.

The top strip simply doesn't work - I wanted the joke to be that as Tad was tip-toeing around worried that he'd be identified as gay, there was a giant sign behind him pointing right at him. Just didn't work.

The bottom strip is kind of sad - in fact, they both reflect a fear I went through back when I came out in 1995. Sure its a funny mis-identification joke, but that Tad is concerned they're going to beat him up just reminds me how much crappier everything used to be. If anything, going through these old strips, on top of getting me interested in doing a new version of it, has shown me that things really have changed. Even when some days it seems like it hasn't.

Technical details: the shading is getting better - before too long I would get rid of those shoulder pad things all the characters have. When you're designing your characters you try to find little things that will differentiate yours so you don't look too much like you're ripping off Fox Trot - but in the end, those things are just distractions. Even if you copied Peanuts by tracing it to learn how to draw, for example, over time your own style would bend another way. If you want to learn how to draw, tracing is the best first step.

Oh, the paper got an email from some ombudsman who was apoplectic that the word "damn" had made it into the paper after being clean for so many years. That's me - taking down barriers.