This Happens -- Page Three

by Craig J. Clark & Elena La Rocca

1-3 4-7 8-11 12-15 16-18 19-22 23-26 27-30

The start of our second semester, one in which This Happens would become an integral part of the Signal comics page (as opposed to only showing up when Random Occurrences didn't). In a way, our foot in the door lead to a number of other comic strips appearing in the paper, some of which deserved to be there and others...well, there were others. Plenty of others. But we were there in the vanguard, clearing the way for everybody else with a pen and paper and a vague idea of what a comic strip should be.

Anyway, one of the first Absurd Notions I ever read was the one in which all of the character bios appeared. I thought that was the coolest way to get introduced to a comic, so I attempted to do a similar thing here. Of course, Kevin had two years of character development to work with and I had seven strips, so the results aren't quite the same.

And yes, I'm still playing on the same F.Y.E. joke in panel four. The tiny words say, "drink: still non-alcoholic."

First published February 2, 1993

Roger's personality begins to assert itself. This strip featured the first of Elena's artist's commentaries. (That's her "Bleach!" next to the title.) I'm not sure about the "Aren'tcha glad this strip's over?" though. That may have been in my original script.

First published February 16, 1993

Even though food service had improved considerably with the move of the dining hall from Decker to Community Commons, college food is still college food. By this time the system allowed students to eat at all of the dining halls on campus -- even the hallowed Travers/Wolfe -- but you still had to run a gastronomical gauntlet. Were the eggs in your omelette fully cooked? How long had that mayonnaise been sitting out without having its ice refreshed? And why did the fancy desserts cost more than the rest of your meal combined?

The Lion's Eye, which is flagrantly being advertised as "coming soon!" in the second panel, was the student literary magazine that Elena (and I, eventually) worked on. It came out only two or three times a year, so the student population had to constantly be reminded of its existence. There was usually plenty of overlap between the staffs of the The Signal and The Lion's Eye, so the paper always gave the magazine plenty of free advertising. For my part, I was glad to let Sue be a shill for the mag.

First published February 23, 1993

At the time this strip was published, William Jefferson Clinton had been in office for little over a month and already the Clinton-bashing had begun in earnest. This was way before the Monica Lewinsky scandal or Travelgate or Filegate (or any other -gates they tried to pin on the man while he was our president), so I couldn't figure out why people were falling over each other to rant and rail against our first Democratic president in twelve years. Thus, this strip.

I was especially proud to discover that it worked on multiple levels because I intended the joke to be on the hippie character who refused to bathe. Elena, however, was one of the people who disliked Clinton and therefore actually felt that the nation was in an "unclean state." People see what they want to see.

For the squinters: The bottom of the first panel reads, "*Artist's Note: Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental!" This was added because my first reaction upon seeing the artwork was to say, "Hey, I have a class with that guy!" Of course, the odd thing is if I let my hair down and put on mirrored sunglasses, now I could pass for him (except for his lack of a mustache -- and the fact that I bathe daily).

Previous page Next page

1-3 4-7 8-11 12-15 16-18 19-22 23-26 27-30