I've been taking quite a bit of flak for this whole storyline - with some people even saying they're going to quit reading my comic over it. And, to be quite honest, I anticipated this kind of reaction when I originally wrote it, back before this comic even launched.

One of the big problems with only writing three four-panel strips a week and keeping to the tight strip-time focus that I do is that time passes really, really slowly for the readers. For Jamie, this has been the events of a few tumultuous days. For us, Jamie got mugged back in December. The threat of incarceration has been hanging over his head this whole time. There's a lot of unresolved tension.

That's unavoidable, though. This is a significant, complex, racially and culturally charged event, and you can't just snap your fingers and expect everything to return to the status quo.