This Happens -- Page Four

by Craig J. Clark & Elena La Rocca

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Ahh, the infamous duck joke. A seminal strip, if I may be so bold. From this moment on, if ever there was a bad joke to be told, Roger would be the one to tell it. This strip also marks the first time Elena looked directly into my brain and drew what she saw there, because in my script I never specified that Roger was using his hands to represent the two ducks, but as soon as I saw the finished artwork I knew that it was perfect. Incidentally, notice what John is reading?

If you've read the rest of this site, you will know that this strip has another significance. Back in the fall on '92 -- while This Happens was just getting off the ground -- I directed a revue show for the student theater group entitled Pardon Me, But You're Sitting on My Duck and since then I had become smitten with the little creatures. It was only a matter of time before they would come to dominate my life and people's birthday and Christmas gifts to me, but for the time being there was only that play and this strip. This would change.

First published March 9, 1993

The Hippie returns. I've capitalized the "h" because that's all I ever called him and he continued to show up periodically, becoming something of a minor character. Here I'm doing a little housecleaning because I think the question arose as to what party he was supposed to be affiliated with. If I had been more politically astute at the time I might have made him a Green, but then the punchline wouldn't have worked, so I wouldn't have anyway. 20/20 hindsight -- you gotta love it.

First published March 30, 1993

The freshman finally gets a drink! And what's that he's drinking? Well, for the squinters, his bottle is labeled a "wine cooler" -- "still, a wine cooler" -- and "Yes, folks, an empty wine cooler." My freshman year I roomed with a guy who actually tried to get drunk one night by drinking a lot of wine coolers. He was a big guy, too, so naturally it didn't work. Our F.Y.E.er here isn't attempting the same thing, but his bodyweight isn't that great so he's a little tipsy. If I had worked on this script a little more I might have actually worked a proper joke into it, but essentially it's a set-up for the following strip:

First published April 6, 1993

I love wordplay of any kind. Anagrams, spoonerisms, palindromes, acrostics -- Monty Python, Lewis Carroll and Douglas R. Hofstadter have all trained me well. So it's ironic that I didn't think of the spoonerism in this title. I had something else entirely in mind when Elena's roommate Heidi spotted what should have been completely obvious. Sometimes I can get so hung up on one idea that everything else just gets filtered out.

A bit of trivia: The freshman guy was originally going to be named Mark, which would have made Sue's second line, "Moonerisms, Spark. Moonerisms." This was going to set up a later comic I had written to make fun of somebody's silly nickname, but Elena didn't like the name Mark, so it was not to be. Essentially, this is the first evidence -- in this comic anyway -- that F.Y.E. students ever came into contact with upperclassmen besides their CAs. Based on this encounter, I'm sure Brock saw the wisdom of the administration's program.

"Tong lime so nee" is a greeting I still use on occasion.

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