I.E. Skin’s Guide Returns with a Reworked Comic and New Characters

A comic that ended its run in a Bay Area weekly paper in the mid-nineties is finding a new home on clerkmanifesto. Its creator is bringing back I.E. Skin’s Guide to All that there is to Know with a refreshed version of an earlier cartoon and a second strip featuring new characters, fox and skunk.

The revival is modest in scale and deliberately open-ended. The creator describes the first cartoon as a way to “get our feet wet”: it reworks an original strip with some redesigns and a little modern rewriting. The next installment moves into new territory. That pairing gives the return two points of entry: readers can see how an older idea changes when revisited, then meet characters who weren’t part of that first step back.

A comic with a history on the site

I.E. Skin’s Guide began as a weekly comic in the Bay Area and ran for several years before ending. Its creator recalls the original run as one of a few modest moments of public artistic success. The series had characters and ideas that stayed in circulation after the paper stopped printing it, including Doris, a super-intelligent alien, and a character of God.

Those figures have surfaced on clerkmanifesto over the years, alongside references to the earlier comic. The site has also hosted historical strips, either directly or through an auxiliary clerkmanifesto page that remains linked in its sidebar. So this return builds on an existing connection between the old work and the creator’s later online writing. The comic hasn’t been entirely absent; what’s new is the decision to bring it back as a project in its own right.

That distinction matters to the shape of the revival. Scattered appearances can keep characters familiar, but a proper return creates room for fresh material and a renewed relationship with readers. Here, the creator presents the relaunch with a light touch, puncturing the grandness of the idea with a shrug: “Sort of, I guess, whatever.” The casual tone suggests a return that doesn’t need to make a case for itself before it starts.

One revised strip, then a new direction

The first cartoon is described as a reworking, not a straight reprint. Redesigns and updated wording make the original a starting point for a new version. That approach leaves the older work visible in the background while allowing the creator to adjust what appears on the page now. The post doesn’t spell out which elements changed, so the comparison is left to readers looking at the cartoon itself.

The second strip takes a different route, introducing fox and skunk in what the creator calls “the wholly new.” The post offers no further account of their personalities or the situations they’ll encounter, so there’s no need to guess at the comic’s direction. For now, their arrival is the clearest sign that the return may involve more than revisiting the archive.

Putting a revised cartoon beside a new one is a useful opening move for a revived comic. The first gives returning readers a link to the strip’s past; the second gives the project somewhere to go. It also leaves the series’ future uncommitted. The creator hasn’t announced a schedule, a planned run, or a larger collection in this post. The immediate offering is simply two cartoons and an invitation to see what happens next.

A low-key resurrection

The post’s central question—whether the old comic ever really went away—gets a playful answer. Its characters and past work had already found their way into clerkmanifesto, even if the creator hadn’t attempted a full resurrection. Publishing the new cartoons there makes that connection more direct, carrying a weekly-paper comic into an online setting without claiming that the original run has simply resumed unchanged.

For readers, the appeal lies in the blend of continuity and possibility. Anyone curious about the comic’s earlier life can follow the trail through the historical strips and recurring characters; newcomers can begin with the redesigned cartoon and fox and skunk. The creator has kept the introduction brief and unceremonious, leaving the drawings to do the work.

The return is still at its beginning. Its first move looks backward, its second introduces something unfamiliar, and neither promises a fixed destination. That makes the next installment the natural thing to watch for: whether Doris, God, fox and skunk, or other parts of the comic’s history will shape what comes after these opening cartoons.