This marks the first appearance of Colin, Puck’s boyfriend, in the series. Puck, Daphne, Phoebe and Colin make up the central cast of characters in the strip. Anyone introduced after this point is just icing on the cake. Colin is a favourite of mine: a nice guy with a streak of immaturity three miles wide. He provided lots of comic potential.

The ‘Mousthkellar’, by the way, was a spoof on the ‘Rathskellar’, a venerable pub on McMaster’s campus. A few years after this strip ran, the university decided to close down all such venerable watering holes and replace them with one giant ‘Super Pub’ (I kid you not, and that’s what they actually called it – a Super Pub), so the Rathskellar sadly is no longer in operation. It was dark and musty and vaguely Germanic in feel. I liked it.

That musty, Teutonic feel doesn’t come through in this strip, mainly because of the intensely lazy background work here. I must win an award for ‘laziest depiction of a bar in a comic strip’. Oh well. I’m not sure what those white circles are supposed to be. I think they were intended to be lights? Perhaps? They’re up to critical interpretation.

My brother’s ex-girlfriend thought the last panel of this strip was hilarious, what with Puck’s facial expression. It works, and I have to say that I’m most proud of a joke when the drawing really plays a crucial role. When body language or facial expressions make a joke fly, it’s a great experience. Of course, when one’s poor drawing skills make a strip tank, it’s even more frustrating, but thankfully that didn’t happen here.