This comic has been refried for your pleasure. A version of this strip first appeared in the Florida Flambeau during Is This Tomorrow?'s early 90s run. In its original form, the panels, each made up of a single sign, were all the same size and placed in an alternating white-on-black and black-on-white series to create a checkerboard pattern. When we were collecting the old strips together to post to the site, Woody discovered the artwork for the signs, but there was no longer any text to go with them. As even a detailed explanation from Woody only brought back fairly vague memories of an experimental strip inspired by EC's Crime SuspenStories comics to my mind, the words had to be rewritten from scratch. Since Woody flies frequently, he also suggested some updating to reflect changes that have occurred in American airports over the last few years. And as we dislike repeating ourselves, he came up with a new schematic for the comic's layout, as well. The term "refried" is borrowed from an index of Will Eisner's Spirit, a brilliant weekly comic which appeared in newspapers during the 1940s and 50s, compiled by cat yronwode for Dennis Kitchen's excellent Spirit magazine in the late 70s. In the 1950s, during a period in which Eisner's assistants had taken over creating the Spirit section, they would sometimes reuse stories created in the 40s by the master himself. As the 50s Spirit stories were one page shorter than the previous decade's output and the artists drawing the feature had styles different from the original creator's work, the newer versions were close approximations, not exact copies, of their original source material. In her index, yronwode referred to these twice-told tales as refried. Seeing parallels, we decided to co-opt the terminology for our own use. And by the way, if anyone discovers a copy of the Flambeau with the original strip, perhaps at the bottom of an old parakeet cage, please let us know, as we'd love to see it.

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