Ricky Martin.

(Late April 1999) Ricky Martin was still professing to be straight at this point, and I had a huge, embarrassing crush on him. This won't be the last time I made a crack about him.

One of the paper's cartoonist quit to cram for finals, so I got to do TWO strips a day - which meant I was running out of material, fast. What to do? Usually have Tad run around being a dork.

The second strip: most of the gay coffee houses I went to in the 1990s were very intense with their causes and signs and art, and very much exactly like this. And god help you if you ordered wrong, you homophobe.

Technical: Zen's new hair shows up here - I hated that weird helmet hair that he'd had since the beginning, thought it was easy to draw - the nose ring is still there, which was pointless as no one could ever tell what it was. Don't overdecorate your characters.