And this week’s cartoon pretty much sums up everything in the previous seven episodes – uncomfortable uniforms, mandatory football game attendance, required show of spirit, and bad haircuts all around. Plus evil upper classmen having fun at the rats’ expense.
But it was all good. I recall the above incident actually happening, though I can’t say if I was a rat at the time or an upper classmen. I just know it happened, and it struck me as funny.
I do believe this is the last of the 2×2 format comics. I know I’ve said that before, and then continued uploading more 2×2 comics. I have no idea why I went with 2 panels across by 2 rows down. Where on earth did I get the idea for that format? It certainly looked like nothing I ever saw in a newspaper. I have no idea how the Collegiate Times worked around my idiotic formatting choice, but they did, and they never sent me any nasty-grams about it, so I am forever grateful to them for that. They were very patient with me, and mercifully criticism-free to a newbie comic artist.
What really puzzles me is the format and quality of the cartoons that follow. You’ll see what I mean next week. I know that the 2×2 cartoons were the first ones I drew and the first ones that ran in the CT. After that, I have a hard time establishing what order the cartoons ran in. I spent an evening or two sorting through all the strips I had, and was able to sort them into Year 01, Year 02, etc. But I can’t necessarily say I got them in the correct order beyond that. I do know that the artwork suddenly started to look a lot better, probably because I found a different pen to ink with and because I got better at erasing my pencil lines. But for some reason, I never seemed to stick with the same kind of pen or paper for too long. You’ll see examples of what I mean as we get further along.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Next week, we get more into the day-to-day details of life as a rat!
