for Roger: Dennis and the Branch

[Mince]

Roger, I don't know if you recall a Beau Peep strip in which Beau and Dennis are walking through the desert and Dennis is hiding behind a twig, camouflaged as a tree. "Come on! If I hadn't sneezed, would you have known I was here!"

At the end of the strip, Beau tells Dennis to ditch the twig before the sergeant sees him, but Dennis refuses.

When they arrive back at the fort, Sergeant Bidet says, "Good to see you, Beau. What happened to Dennis? Was he captured?" And Dennis is grinning.

Is this the only time you decided to have the Sergeant (or another character) act out of character to get a laugh?

[Roger Kettle]

You're asking me to give the thought process behind something I wrote 40 years ago! I'm pretty sure this was one of the early strips and, you have to remember, the characters were still being developed at that time. Later, the sergeant became pretty much a straight man to counter the daftness around him.
That's my story, anyway.

[Mince]

So you didn't keet detailed daily diary entries about your thoughts concerning each strip?

[Roger Kettle]

Well, that would depend on what "keet" means.

[Mince]

Keet, as in young guineafowl, the type of bird that travels behind herd animals and forages within manure, here used metaphorically as a verb.

[Roger Kettle]

That makes sense.

[Mince]

Er, good, so explain it to me.