N.A. Humor: Wuthering Heights

This was my final N.A. Humor comic so I wanted to end using the silly, observational humor I tried to use throughout writing it. To me, it makes sense for a 20-year-old guy to not completely know who was the protagonist of Wurthering Heights. So, of course, he would just associate the name of the protagonist with an orange, rotund feline since Garfield and Heathcliff did look very similar in their cartoon forms. Heathcliff the cat is certainly more redeemable a character than Heathcliff the man and I think it would be a delightfully different adaptation to redo the novel with the character cat as the main character.

Now, 12 years later, I am proud of the many N.A. Humor comics I created as a simpler aside from the Kelly comics. The focus of N.A. Humor was on Kelly’s brother, Seth, who had so much potential. That’s the thing, these comics are like a time capsule for optimistic hopes and dreams and are both fun and a bit painful to look back on after time has passed and altered how things actually turned out. Perhaps that’s why it’s good to look back on these comics years later, in order to remember how things used to be.

Kelly # 97: The Job Applicant

I think when my classmates and I started college, the outcome we expected to have when we graduated was to have multiple job offers waiting for us. But then 2008 and the Great Recession hit and my dream of having multiple offers from a variety of reputable employers in the spring of 2010 was crushed.

It probably was delusional to think I could land a creative job with only a minor in graphic design and a design internship under my belt. Perhaps the Peace Corps would have taken me if I had chosen to actually apply with them. And my roommates thought they were going to ride it out in grad school yet things were just as bad when they graduated as well.

It’s interesting to see how different this job market is from what we currently have during the Great Resignation. Hopefully 2021 and 2022 graduates have better choices for jobs than we did 12 years ago.

Another quick note, I wonder if it was problematic for me to make all of the employers be men or just what I was primarily seeing in my job search?

Kelly # 96: lady in waiting

This is one of my favorite comics. Primarily, because I was graduating in 2010, during the Great Recession and jobs were hard to come by. My career counselor at college said with my resume and transcript that typically I would be able to get any job I wanted. But the recession ground mine and my fellow classmates’ ambitions to a halt. Seeing how you would apply for a job then if you did hear back once you may never hear back again reminded me of the perils of dating and waiting for a guy to call you back. It was certainly the opposite of the employee’s market we are in now where employers are desperate for workers. Did anyone else feel this desperation trying to get a job during the recession?

Kelly # 95: Homeward Bound?

This story line does stem from my real life when it felt like everyone I had graduated high school with was getting married by the time I was finishing college to enter the “real world.” In comparing myself to other people, I’ve always found reasons to be dissatisfied with my life so it was no different when it came to my love life. At one point, while I had graduated from college but was still unemployed, someone asked if I was going to go back to school to get my “MRS” degree. It took me a second to see he meant if I was going to go back to school just to land a husband. Hopefully, the people in most hometowns are not so singularly focused on a woman’s worth being tied to if she is married.

In the end, I stayed single for a lot longer than it took me to find a job in the rough recession years. But this is the year I am marrying to the love of my life. Hopefully we will go the distance since I know some of my high school classmates are no longer married to their spouses. But even if we don’t stay together, at least I know I am worth more than the ring on my left hand.

And I will say again that I am proud of the details I put into these panels, from the engagement rings and baby carriage in the title to the store merchandise and register decor at the hardware store. Hopefully these are fun details other people have noticed too.

Kelly #94: First & Final Spring Break

My first and final spring break trip was to Montreal during my senior year. Technically, the year another friend and I went away but that was to go only slightly farther north to visit her friends at Cornell.

Montreal was a very charming city, aside from a few things that went wrong. From what I remember, all of this happened except I don’t think I fell at Notre Dame Basilica which to this day is still the prettiest church I’ve ever been in. But we did get detained at customs for saying something stupid and got a little bit harassed by fellow travelers who were also staying in our room at the hostel. The walk to the top of Mount Royal may have been rainy but it was still beautiful and probably the most peaceful part of the whole trip.

If given the chance, I would return to Montreal, though maybe not in the rainy spring time. And there are other parts of Canada I would rather see like Quebec City. Hopefully one day I will go when travel is safer after COVID gets more under control…

Kelly #93: On Hold HELL

While I am not sure if this exact thing happened when I was trying to make reservations at Binghamton’s finest restaurant for my graduation dinner, it certainly has happened other times I was put in a waiting queue on the phone. You wait until you can’t hold out anymore and then they finally answer. Too bad for Kelly that the answer involved having to go there in person to make this specific reservation anyway.

Again, I am proud of myself for the level of detail I put into these panels. For example, the clear “Make Grad Dinner Res” note taped to Kelly’s wall and having the Yellow Pages open on her desk; not to mention her backpack on the floor.

And it’s funny but makes sense with the progress of time how some of these things are so dated now like using the Yellow Pages instead of a search engine and a flip phone instead of a smartphone. It certainly is nicer now to not have to find space in your house for the thick Yellow Pages. If only the painfully long instances of being on hold would also go away for good.

Kelly #92: Soiree Anyone?

This is another one in which Kelly thinks she’s still studying abroad but it’s a pretty inconsequential storyline. In fact, I don’t remember us going to a dance like this during the final semester of college but it must have happened because I definitely had a version of Kelly’s dress. However, I also have no idea what place with dancing in Binghamton would provide martini glasses so I suspect that I made this up. In this one, I am not sure if the joke lands because it’s not clear to me why the guy misunderstood Kelly unless it was because it was loud there. In any case, Kelly is still speaking in her Britishisms which is delightful.

Kelly #91: Myths of Binghamton University

This fun one was a joy to create and celebrate the good aspects of my university. As I and Kelly were both English majors, I definitely related to number one, going so far as to render one of my more irritating classmates in the panel. Really, it was my dream that the pretentious English majors wouldn’t amount to anything after graduation, but I didn’t follow up on how the Great Recession impacted them and whether they struggled to find employment like I ultimately did. In any case, upon reading this again Kelly’s “I speak English” shirt in French also amuses me.

Many people believe that number two was actually real but it is a very easy fact to look up. For one thing, there was never a Tower of Terror episode in the original Twilight Zone series (it was just made up for the attraction). Also Rod Sterling was not a student at our college. He is still probably one of the coolest people to have lived in Binghamton; he is certainly more impressive than Binghamton University alumnus Billy Baldwin (sorry, Billy). Also, I wanted to add that I am still pretty happy with how my comic rendering of Sterling turned out.

Many people, including some of my friends, would rag on Binghamton and complain that it sucked, but clearly they did not look into all of the small town, charming things one could do in Binghamton. In fact, I didn’t even check out all of these things while I was there but I did enjoy apple picking, the Spiedie Fest and Balloon Rally, and the many carousels.

Reading this comic, makes me want to road trip back to Binghamton with my college classmates to discover what has changed at Binghamton in the nearly 12 years since we were last there. What are some of your favorite myths about your college?

Kelly #90: Last Breakdown

My final semester did feel like I was trying to fit in too much, but I don’t think I ended up nearly losing it like Kelly in this comic. Looking back on it, I don’t remember many stressful moments, most likely because most of my classes and my job were actually fun. The main worries I had were about job applications and the GREs (which I never actually took, I only did practice exams). Maybe it’s because we only remember the good times. It makes me wonder what I will remember 10 years from now, when I am spending so much of my time working and don’t have a ton of other activities crammed into my days. Sometimes it seems like it will be better to do more with my time now instead of spending my non-working time resting but I guess that’s a thought to ponder another time. On a side note, I continue to enjoy the details I put into these comics. For example, I don’t know why in her senior year Kelly needed a rubber ducky but it makes me happy to see it in the comic along with her art class and other school supplies.

Kelly #89: Senior Moments

I feel like this comic encapsulates my final semester in college. All of us seniors had our own very specific ambitions. Some were less obtainable than others (becoming president of the United States) while others were just sensible planning to avoid becoming our parents. Like Kelly, my goal was to work in book publishing. It turns out Kelly was right to worry about being unemployed after graduating from college because the recession decimated the publishing industry so I never did land a full-time book publishing job. Eventually, I did leave my rural hometown to live and work in a city but not as a “spinster librarian” like my friends joked (side note, it’s not nice to use spinster as an insult because a woman’s worth is not defined by whether or not she is single). Eventually, we all forged our own paths and 11 years later are mostly happy after graduation.

Kelly 88: Basketball?

This one makes me cringe a little bit. Women’s sports teams are very powerful and impressive and some of the most entertaining to watch. However, it seems my comic characters didn’t think that, preferring instead to support the Binghamton men’s basketball team, despite their numerous scandals.

Most of the issues with the men’s team, who had only recently been good enough to play in March Madness, came to light while I was studying abroad but it rocked our university, especially since we didn’t have a football team so basketball was our pillar sport. And even though basketball had previously been so popular, when I was in college I only attended a couple of games but that was more than enough.

NA Humor: Teakipedia

Wikipedia is much more accurate than in this comic but I believe at the time our college professors used stories like this to deter us from using it when doing research. As the creator, I think it’s very funny to picture the American colonists throwing whole teapots and cups into Boston Harbor in order to invent one of the most ubiquitous coffee chains in the world. In real life, I do not think my brother would blatantly rip off Wikipedia to write an essay but it’s something I can easily imagine his comic counterpart Seth doing. It also begs the question, what’s the most outlandish thing you’ve read on Wikipedia?

Kelly #87: Help Not Wanted

The lack of employers willing to talk to liberal art majors was a big feature of my first university job fair senior year. It’s hard for me to tell even now if that was because that’s just how things were always done or because of the fairly recent recession. Either way, as an English major, I felt incredibly left out when the schools of engineering, nursing, and business and even the human development department had representation at the job fair but the only table for Harpur College was for the economics majors. Some say the recession was the beginning of the end for liberal arts majors and I am not sure if that’s true nor whether I would have a different major if I was in college now post-recession. Perhaps students have the best chance at getting a job if they diversify and major in both something they love and something that can guarantee a job like STEM.

Kelly #86: Reverse Culture Shock

It was definitely a difference going from living with younger classmates who could legally drink to ones who were older than that but could not drink. When I was in England I got questions like how did I like being able to legally drink. They forgot that I was 21 when I studied abroad so I could already legally drink in my home country. Someone also asked the tried and true question of why young adults in the U.S. can vote and die at war when they are 18 but cannot drink until they are 21. Still, I do not know the answer to that.

And even though my roommates my final semester of college did not want to go out on a week night, didn’t stop me from going with my other senior classmates. In fact, my final one was the only semester I had in college where I partied the most, took the most classes, and managed to get my only 4.0 of my college career. Now I wish I had that same kind of stamina.

Winter break of my senior year. Although I was sad that my studying abroad period was over, I was relieved to have a month-long break before returning back to my home university. Looking back, I don’t even know what I did during that break, besides sleep and get over the cold and ear infection I sustained my final week of studying abroad.

Since my next semester was my final one of college, it felt like there was a lot of pressure to make sure everything was ready, especially with the need to get a job looming. One thing I do remember that I had to do was that I had to sort through my huge pile of books I took from my book publishing internship and distribute them amongst my friends and family. That and posting photos from my travels were certainly more fun than working on my résumé but that had to be done too. So now we say good bye to the study abroad period of the “Kelly” comics and move into the final college comics.