This was the final strip from the original packet of nine I applied with (as you can tell from the old character designs - it really amazes me how much I've improved since I started, though I still can't draw a decent speech bubble to save my life).

I asked that it not be printed, replacing it instead with the Spock strip. This was for three main reasons:

1) Primarily: this was after the strip referencing Mephistopheles, which none of my roommates understood. Apparently Faust isn't as pop culture as it should be (come on, people, get hip with 18th century German lit!), so I figured if referencing a classic literary figure was hard to convey, I couldn't expect anyone to understand the wonder of Journey.

2) A TA subbing for my Chem 2B discussion made this observation about the professor. I was the only one who got it. However, the fact we both thought the same thing made me feel that it wasn't cool that I should take sole credit for the joke.

3) This professor actually exists. He left for another university about six months before I drew this, but he was an awesome guy. I drew this comic out of admiration for him, but I know it could be interpreted as the opposite, and I didn't want to look as if I were deriding him in public. A good rule of thumb about jokes that are based in reality is that they should have some distance from the original observation (except maybe the Keith-Moon-driving-a-car-into-a-pool joke), and I neglected to do that with this strip.

ANYWAY.

Ink on copier paper. Though it remains unpublished, I believe it's still technically (C) The California Aggie