Hallway 100 Comics

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Another year is over, and Hallway 100 has evolved quite a bit in 2014. Here is part 1 of my annual review. Today we’ll focus on choosing the comics that made 2014 what it was. 🙂

2014 started out with a whimper. We went on hiatus for the spring/summer (I had some projects I needed to address). Comics returned in the fall, and I feel like they returned with a bang! One of my favorite comics is from May 24th, 2013, which sums up Mt. Caramel more concisely than I ever could.

The comics immediately post-return exemplified this wacky spirit, and I was very happy with them. There were less week-long story arcs than usual. The ones I mainly recall are the Dominicans taking things to far and Brian the Bully facing Coach Fit in what has the be the most AWESOME match up ever. There were several delayed two parters, where Thursday’s comic might close up a plot-line from Monday. This wasn’t planned, but when I make a schedule for the semester, week long arcs cause the dilemma of leaving no room for one-off strips in the week. I’ll realize that I go through a period with no Cleo comics, and when I try to fit one in, the week-long comics are automatically disqualified. If I put said Cleo comic in that week, the entire 4 strips get bumped. If it’s a really funny Cleo strip, that wins out, and so now I have 3 more comics slots to fill. So after a whole semester away from our lovely characters, there was this drive to fit in as many funny strips as I could with each of them, and thus one-offs won over week-longs. Every semester I have this grand plan for week-longs, but the reality is I only get to fit in half of them, thus delaying them to the next semester. That’s why the Dean of Discipline has not yet been filled, but that works out nicely as a beginning of the semester storyline for Spring.

One other story I debated putting in was the return of Yang. We had a LOT of Yang last year. I had planned to introduce several characters, there’s really only enough room to introduce one new teacher per semester I’ve realized. So Yang was chosen, as she had a real story arc to go through (a descent into madness culminating in this,and later this). Gladiator quote aside, this was one of my favorite story arcs, as most comic gags have a limit. In this case, it was Yang being borderline psychotic. Having her stab Annie pushed the envelope, and there were actual repercussions for it (a year long suspension). My original plan was for her to come back this semester, but there wasn’t enough time to do it properly. Having her come back and then not hearing from her again this semester would have been a missed opportunity. That being said, I misplaced the comic text in which she returns, so that comic may be delayed unless I can find it (from what I remember, it was too priceless to rewrite).

So yeah, those are the struggles of planning out the comics schedule. Interesting stuff, right? 😉  Next post I’ll discuss how the focus of the comics has changed somewhat over the course of the semester.

Until then,

TY