Character Profiles

Here are a few of the characters you'll see in  The Ivory Tower …

(… and a few you won't …)

David King

The star of the show, David is a thirty-year-old college dropout who has decided to go back and get his degree. He has returned to his old stomping grounds, the University of Texas at Austin. UT is comfortable territory for him. He originally enrolled way back in 1985. After five years of major-hopping, he came to regard the university as his home. As he did when he was a teenager, David quickly left home.

In the interim years, David worked a handful of office jobs, including a five-year stint at the State Bar of Texas. Luckily, he had met and married Beth Dinger before landing the State Bar post. Their relationship proved strong enough to withstand that notorious association. But this year, with the threat of children in his near future, David has made the decision to return to college and get his degree. Somehow, he has conceived the notion that this will free him from debt.

David's latest chosen field is computer science. Since thousands of computer programmers are hired into new jobs every year, David figures that the market must be good. (He doesn't yet understand that the same few thousand programmers get hired into new jobs every year, and are subsequently laid off the following year as big software companies eat small ones like whales feeding on plankton. But he's a cartoon character - let's allow him his follies.)

Beth's income is paying for half of the couple's bills during David's schooling. Half of the remainder is covered by student loans. To make up the remaining quarter, David has taken a job at the Genetics Department on campus. This will, of course, prove to be almost as educational as several semesters of classwork.

(Note: David is a mouse. He bears absolutely no resemblance to any other cartoon mice of large, litigious animation empires. Yes, he has funny ears. And I suppose yours are things of beauty?)

Beth King

Beth is David's wife of seven years. While he is pursuing his degree, Beth supports David financially and emotionally. She is a woman of plentiful talents, many of which will be displayed over the course of the comic strip. (As the story progresses, the reader is invited to keep a tally of how many different skills Beth demonstrates. Doubtless they will become increasingly esoteric as time passes. They represent abilities possessed by the author's own wife, who, though sharing the name Elizabeth, is not actually a cat. Cats, as cat owners will attest, are adept only at destruction. The author's wife is adept at creation, and leaves the destruction to the author and his dogs.)

Claire Strunk

David's supervisor at the Genetics Department, Claire is happily entrenched in the mire of UT bureaucracy. She is something of a Virgil to David's Dante, or perhaps a John Hammond to his Dr. Grant. For those keeping score, she is a hedgehog, pointedly.

Brittney Comfort

David's 19-year-old classmate, Brittney provides him with delightful reminders of the mounting weight of his years. Brittney is a hind, which is the female half of "deer," or, in some circles, the dearest half of a female. (Boy, that was hardly worth the effort.)

Nathan Harris

Nathan is David's erstwhile workmate at the State Bar of Texas. He's a bear. Make up your own pun.

Mike Martin

Mike is a work-study at the Genetics Department, and a pristine example of that inherent oxymoron. Appropriately, he is a mutt.

And here are a few characters you will never see in  The Ivory Tower …

Dottie Flake

Dottie is a UT cheerleader that David meets in his Wicker Engineering 301 class. She and her jock boyfriend, Jeff "Incredible" Hulkowski, are proud and vocal members of the UT Greek community. It's a good thing Dottie is a little bit ditzy, or else she might really take offense at the breast and butt jokes Jeff belches out between Budweisers! Poor David's eyes almost roll right out of his skull as these two repeatedly demonstrate the high standards of the university's athletic elite.

Brigit Dikes

A truly independent woman, Brigit meets David just as he steals a peek at Dottie's Alpine neckline, and thus becomes his self-appointed antisexist conscience. She is savvy, intelligent and politically active. While her attitude is decidedly superior, the reader is occasionally amused by her secret fantasy life as a prison guard, in charge of a chain gang comprising Dottie Flake shackled to the Spice Girls.

Professor Atka Mip

An immigrant to this country, this Computer Science professor is unfamiliar with the subtleties of American society. As such he employs behavior and manners which, while perfectly acceptable in his native land, to David and company are either amusingly quaint, entertainingly rude, hilariously absurd or patently embarrassing, depending upon what grade the author received on his latest programming assignment. In order to avoid offending readers of any particular nationality, Professor Mip hails from a fictional country comprising many diverse racial stereotypes, thus spreading the offense invisibly thin among all readers.

Bill Clinton, Newt Gengrich, George Bush, Jr., Jim Bob Moffett, etc.

(Garry Trudeau is a god. I am not. If I feel the need to embellish on the irony these men already provide in ample quantity, you will find it on the editorial page. Besides, one of my potential employers might actually read my comic strip, and who knows what his or her political slant might be? Whatever it is, rest assured that I strongly agree with it.)

Socrates the Dog

One of the few non-anthropomorphic characters is the strip, Socrates is David and Beth's cute pet dog. While everyone else sees just a plain ol' pooch, the reader is privy to Socrates' cynical, erudite witticisms. As Socrates gains in popularity among fans of the strip, he begins to supplant David as the star. In the inevitable conclusion of the cycle, he gains his own pet (Harry the Mole), markets himself as a stuffed animal, and lives out the remainder of his days making cookie and underwear jokes.