Ask Mr. Bear: Youth

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The third and final Rupert Bear question asked by (the first two asked Mrs. Bear about her first real date with Mr. Bear and Rupert about any experiences he had with owning pets).

While Mr. Bear is addressed as "Clive" in this comic, I stress that the name is not official in any way and is simply the name I gave my interpretation of the character.

Clive Bear mentions that he was as nice as his son Rupert was when he was a boy, and we see him on a stroll with Bill Badger's dad and Podgy Pig's father Cedric when they were children.

Mr. Bear goes on to reminisce on Rupert and Bill becoming friends when they were only toddlers and his grandson George Nicholas Bear being on a playdate with Bill's son Benedict when they were only babies.

Mr. Bear is then informed by his wife Margaret (also a name I made up) that Rupert is visiting with George Nicholas Bear as well as Rupert's daughter Ursula.

The arrow and number things were added to this comic as an experiment. You see, the requester has informed me that they were confused with the order the panels were intended to be read in the previous comics. People have complained to me about the panel order in my comics not being clear before, so I felt it was high time I made an attempt to do something about it.

First off, I've never really understood much about people having to address the panel order being confusing. I always assumed that anyone who got the order wrong would figure out the intended panel order. But I see now that I can't go on assuming that everyone will read my comics the way I intend them to be.

I'll be honest when I say that I find the visual aids of the order the panels are supposed to be read look kind of buggy and distracting, so I'm probably not going to use them again.

And I just realized that I forgot to put a "The End" card on the last panel. Just in case, I'll clarify that there are no more pages to this comic and what you see is all there is to it.

It's not that I have a problem with criticism, it's simply that 98% of the time, I have no idea how I'm supposed to respond to it. I understand the complaints about the panel order being confusing, certain spots not being completely colored in, and stories being hard to understand without reading any of the prior pages, but not every comic in existence has a concrete rule on what order the panels should be written, the small spots can be tricky to color in without making a mistake, and it would get tedious and repetitive if I had to recap every single flipping thing that happened on the previous pages.

I will still take into consideration any observations you have on where I can improve, but I can't promise that I'll always understand it.

I'm really sorry to be kvetching so much about other people criticizing my techniques.

Rupert Bear currently belongs to Universal