A: No, it's not because I'm lazy. I intended to do that from the start. The change is supposed to demarcate the difference between the stories as part of a larger, written compendium of children's tales and the mishaps that the same characters engage in as part of the webcomic, which is outside (or maybe that's inside) the realm of the book's reality. Even though everyone is now simultaneously inside and outside of the book at the same time, it is only when the book is opened and someone is attempting to read the book that the reality of the book asserts itself enough to supply color, since that is the book's purpose. This can be a little confusing, I know, but it makes perfect sense to the book.

Q: What does Gingerbread have to do with any of this?

A: There are two answers to this. The first answer is that it doesn't have anything to do with the comic, that it's simply the first thing that popped into my head when I came up with the story idea and it's stuck every since. The second answer is that gingerbread in the familiar stories can be seen as a symbol of false hopes and disillusionment. The witch lures Hansel and Gretel to her with the false hope of sweets in her gingerbread house. She in turn is disillusioned about her power over the children when Gretel pushes her into the gingerbread oven. The man and woman who create the Gingerbread Man have their hopes of a tasty treat dashed, while the Gingerbread Man himself is disillusioned about his ability to trust the fox who eats him. In a way much of the story is about TheO's gradual disillusionment with the idea that as a Narrator he is the be all and end all of the story world, that he has some sort of control over the lives of the characters in stories he narrates.
Even if the first answer is the true one, I still like the second answer better.

Q:Why doesn't Rocky have eyes/a nose/ a face?

A: Partly because I didn't have the self-confidence to draw them when I first started out, and partly because she's supposed to be modeled after a children's book illustration. And while some illustrations go in for the large teeth and scary eyes, this is one of the more saccharine books that simply makes the spider a black blob.

Q: I know you're mixing up stories, but even so, I don't remember (story) that way.

A: Most fairy tales and nursery rhymes began life as part of an oral tradition, and as such many different versions of the tales and rhymes exist today. Although this difference generally lies within simple word choice or slightly different phrasing, occasionally different versions can be quite dissimilar. For the version that I choose to work with, go here.

Have a question? Email me at Falen_gingerbread at hotmail.com