We return to our story already in progress.

So just to confuse things even more, these are the college strips that pick up the "story," such as it is, that I ended the Big City strips on. It doesn't matter; there won't be a quiz.

This was about December of 1998, and after two months of the strip (which was widely shrugged at by the student body, I'm happy to report) I finally had Tad come out. How fun then to start getting emails by people shocked that this was a gay strip. I had to think on that one for a long time. How in the world could you have read even one of these and not know what was going on.

The Big City strips were going to have Donna incorporated as a new character, while the college one did away with her as quickly as possible. I was working out my own guilt about the exact same situation, and realized in drawing this that there's no comedy to be had in dumping your girlfriend, whether you're gay or not. And, callous as it is, Frank was waiting for Tad.

Technical: I'm still hand lettering at this point, which I think is difficult to read, and nobody has a lick of shading. That's white out in the last panel - that's what you did when you made a mistake because Photoshop wasn't a thing yet. Heck, and this point I still had dial up internet and Netscape, and the strips were mailed into the paper so they could take photos of them to hand layout on the master page. I feel like I'm describing how clay tablets were once made. This strip is only fifteen years old but it seems twice that.