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Sometimes I draw comics just so I can test out new facial expressions. I kind of like what Ben’s got going on here.

Cartoonists make all sorts of decisions about how our characters look, and many of these have to do with streamlining the drawing process. Four-fingered hands, for example, are one example of this. Lack of fingernails are another. Does anyone else get weirded out when parts of anatomy, discarded in the design process, randomly show up on a character? Sometimes the extra detail is part of the joke, and the weirdness is intentional. But sometimes it feels like the creator suddenly realized they needed this castoff detail. Like, “Oh crap, I need so-and-so to paint their nails for this scene, but none of my characters have nails! I guess they suddenly do, for this scene, and only this scene!”

I know that’s a weird statement coming from me, since my characters sprout arms and hands only when convenient, but that’s part of these guys’ design. It’s a feature, not a bug. Ben and Winslow definitely do not have fingernails, because they don’t even really have fingers.

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Andrew Kaye (known in some circles as AK) is the creator of Ben & Winslow and other questionable comics, many of which can be found in his deviantART gallery. He’s also the editor-in-chief of this magazine.