This rejected strip is the genesis of the Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit storyline.  It was originally going to be the last strip of the previous story – Joyce comes back to her room late at night, finds a bunch of dicks drawn on her whiteboard, erases them angrily, there’s a beat, and then she returns and draws her own.  

It was a potentially funny idea, but the timing wasn’t right.  I don’t think the timing could have possibly been right in five panels.  There needs to be a much larger gap between her erasing them and returning to redraw one herself.  In a perfect world, I woulda done like two rows and repeat that penultimate panel like a billion times.  But naw, it wasn’t working.  

Plus I then I thought it’d be hilarious if she accidentally drew it in permanent marker because Mike switched the pen out at some point and Joyce freaks out and draws on everyone’s and I extrapolated this whole series of things and OH HEY WHAT IF IT’S PRESENTED AS A MYSTERY

AND AMAZI-GIRL HAS TO SOLVE IT

super best idea

So I threw this comic in the trash.  I repurposed some art from this strip for a new set of strips featuring Mike and Dina, to sort of prop up some potential other suspects before the mystery begins.  I threw those strips in before Amazi-Girl and Dorothy had their interview, pushing that back by two days, and the rest was history.  

Looking back, it’s weird that Ethan was everyone’s number-one suspect for a while, sometimes a close second.  I didn’t set him up as a suspect at all!  

EDIT: Oh oh oh oh oh, and the title of this rejected last strip was “Appendix.”  GET IT?? GET IT??????????????????