Campuside

Many thousands of years ago -- way back in 1991, to be exact -- my wife, thanks to her sorority connections, was forced to toil as the layout editor of the Stevens school paper, the Stute.
``That paper needs a cartoon,'' I told her. ``You should get one.''
She looked at me meaningfully.
So I began writing and drawing a comic strip called Campuside, for no reason I can discern, even all these years later. The first strip appeared in the February 1, 1991 issue. The next week, I submitted a cartoon, but there wasn't room for it. I went ballistic -- politely -- because I didn't see the point of having a regular comic strip unless it actually was regular. The next week, Campuside appeared again, and did so in every issue thereafter for the next two and a half years or so. I finally stopped drawing it in September of 1993, although I did draw one last Campuside, titled Christmaside, for the paper's Christmas issue. I even managed to get a cartoon in the week Dawn's father died, which I spent in Philadelphia, by scribbling up one panel, photocopying that panel at the local 7-11, cutting and pasting it with new dialogue, and Federal Expressing it to the printer the day of printing.
During those two and a half years, the comic underwent various changes. By the last couple of cartoons, I was trying to move the strip towards a more standard size, but by then I felt I could no longer draw a cartoon to interest college undergraduates, being almost two years out of school myself. So I just stopped.
All fifty-two cartoons are here. Some of them are very bad scans made from copies of the paper I saved; most of them are from originals. A couple are screwed up, because my copy wasn't the final copy. Often, I was wrapping the strip up as the layout was being packed to be sent to the printer, and sometimes I made my final changes on a copy which went out and never returned. One strip I simply cannot find, so only the newspaper copy exists. Others I just have the bits and pieces I eventually assembled into a last copy, which is lost.
Such, alas, is life.
It is my opinion -- biased, of course -- that the good cartoons don't start until the end of the first semester. I really had no idea what I was doing until then. After that, I got good and cynical and began to pick on the administration, professors, students, and myself. Then it got funny(er).
You can view the strips in chronological order or just wander aimlessly.
If you care about who all these characters are, read my character summary.