Oh, here is Cherry attempting her “Perry Mason” routine to try and scuttle this impromptu investigation. It’s a transparently silly argument to make, given that Cherry is admitting—in front of Violet—to being present, along with Ernest and Caroline. The only way this makes sense is if Cherry knows Violet would just as soon not want to deal with this situation in the first place, or that Violet already secretly approved of Cherry’s rescue plans and is now put into this embarrassing position because Caroline and Ernest are too dense to realize they could have pocketed the fee for doing nothing. But we have already covered that ground. In other words, what does Jules Rivera have up her sleeve?

But aside from the tacky wallpaper and equally tacky antagonists, what struck me immediately today is the hatching on Violet’s dress. Is Rivera experimenting with old-school b/w techniques to model shading and volume? This is not common in her work, where it usually comes off stark and sketchy in b/w newspapers. In truth, many cartoonists avoid shading. Shading can make strips look darker and crowded because of their small size. That means they could be harder to see or read, making them less attractive to editors and readers. This is nothing new, of course. Back in the 1960s, Chester Gould, in his Dick Tracy comic strip, made known his displeasure at shrinking comic strip sizes by having one of his characters periodically draw a comic strip called Sawdust, whose characters were simply dots.