There is one good thing about being comic-strip characters: if you’re tired of that icky brown sofa, you easily can change it into an icky green sofa. If you don’t like that, you just change it back. The sofa in A&J, which practically is a character actor in its own right, is an almost identical copy of a sofa I owned in 1984, when I was developing the strip. It was easy to draw, which was a big plus in those days, and it was low, ideal for 360-degree viewing. However, I did not do a lot of complicated camera angles in those days. I drew mostly in profile, which required the least skill, and that included the sofa, for years depicted mostly as a square. As I said, it was easy to draw. Occasionally, I still will draw the sofa from profile, usually with Arlo’s head popping out of the top as he’s watching TV, but when you see that these days you can be sure I was pressed for time.
