Thank YOU for thanking ME. I am honored that you even bothered to leave a comment. And I am sorry - I didn’t want what I said or did to suggest that you were going to recycle old strips in B&W. My little de-colorization demonstration was partly just playing around and partly showing how much you’d need to do exactly what you’re doing - redrawing and re-toning the characters. (But I still say Red Robot is never going to be as menacing in grey)
P.S.: Today’s strip you should’ve saved for the newspapers in January - unless “chocolate condoms” is on the U.F.S. List of Prohibited Phrases.

False cliffhangers are usually a very bad thing. I remember a particularly heinous example in a “Commando Cody” movie serial that was being shown on TV years ago. Our Hero was seen entering a cave, then the Evil Aliens pointed a beam at the cave to make it collapse. They even showed a bad effects shot for a second of C. Cody standing, trying to shield himself with his hands as rocks were falling in front of him. When the next episode came, it started with Commando-guy entering the cave, then a scene of him coming out another exit from the cave, THEN the aliens pointing their cave-collapse beam. Horrors! Now Our Hero won’t be able to go back the way he came! Sorry, not the same as being trapped IN the cave. And another fraud had been perpetrated on the impressionable Saturday Matinee audience of the ’50s.

It takes a special talent to turn a False Cliffhanger into a good laugh, but John Allison of “Scary Go Round” has gone and done it. Last Friday, we left our favorite generic character The Boy somewhere in Wales having been pulled from the wreckage of his not-so-floating caravan by… by what?

Whoa! Quite a menacing green ghoulish character that Ivor. And what is he going to force The Boy to do? That Marines bluff is quick thinking, but it’s not going to work for long. What will become of The Boy?!? (It really is kinda fun using “The Boy” as a character name) Come back for Monday’s strip… Same The Boy Time… Same The Boy Channel… (okay, now the joke’s getting old)

Comes Monday and the first panel of he new strip shows exactly what Ol’ Igor wanted with our young protagonist…

Defragging his computer! Now THAT is a funny False Cliffhanger! And it leads into further funniness with the computer-illiterate Ivor, although I really think he uses that Magic Thinky Box for more than just cataloging toadstools. After all he is a troll. (He’s probably got a membership at MetaFilter.)

It is also one of those rare occasions when the very first panel of a comic made me laugh (of course, only if you’d read Friday’s Ciffhanging Episode). But Mr. Allison is quite capable of doing that. Friday’s strip did it too, with the Welsh Police identifying one of the caravan thieves as Batgirl, based on a pair of underwear left behind. And so did last Thursday’s (”I converted the chemical toilet into a rudimentary fuel cell…”) and twice last Monday (”WILLING to make an exception for the Queen because she is special (obviously)” and “C: B pays for A“).