Boxer briefs and broken necks.

The most critical emails I ever got about my strip during college were always from gay students who thought I was making fun of their lives. I guess I thought it was pretty obvious that I was gay too, given the material - and really, how much hubris would I have had to have had to be straight and draw this - but still I got plenty of hate mail. This one, about choosing to be gay (which is super not the point) got a lot, mostly because of the new "reparative" therapy stories that were coming out. I probably should have dealt with that, but there is very little comedy to be wrung from that topic.

The second strip - as usual, Zen pokes Tad's balloon. I had a really strong obsession with Brad Pitt at the time - my husband's words were "you wouldn't shut the hell up about him" - he was my first crush as an out gay man, so I promptly turned into a twelve year old girl about him, complete with his posters in my bathroom. Oh, Jennifer Aniston, we had it all and it slipped through our fingers.

Ugh, Jesse Helms - I forgot you were a thing, may you rot in hell.