Top or Bottom?

I think this is when I fell in love with Zen - he never got tired of messing with Tad, who is often quite messable. The introduction still reads a bit awkward for me - wait a minute, you're not gay?! - but I'll chalk that up to the times. The paper made me change the last panel and add the word "bunk" - the original intent was "are you top or bottom," because he's just messing with Tad. I guess gay readers would have been shocked at such carnality.

The second strip is a rehash of the college version - first thing that bugs me is that they are stretched because I tried to cheat it in Photoshop and it didn't work. Gross. Second is the wording: the thing about a comic strip is that you have to figure out how to do a lot of set up in very few words. Most of the time I think I get it, but times like this I clearly couldn't let go of the punchline, and it took a lot of work to get there. Kill your darlings, friends.

About Ben....there's no easy way to say this, but the entire joke with Ben is that I thought for whatever reason that it was hilarious that they had a token straight friend. I can't tell you why. Eventually he turned into a sort of decent character, in the way that I always need someone to walk into panel and annoy the others, but he's such a one note joke that only I would think is funny that it's kind of embarrassing. Did I mention I named him after my college best friend as a tribute? (PS - I just realized that he's called "Danny" in the strip - right, because the paper didn't like having two characters named Zen and Ben - so I went with Danny for reasons unremembered)