Strips 28-31 of the popular comic strip Molarity, which previewed in The Observer in 1977.
28 This series of cartoons about Notre Dame history was hosted by an unnamed professor. The professor was based on my Art Traditions professor, Robert Leader, a gentle, knowledgeable man whose class felt as soothing as watching Captain Kangaroo. (If you are under 40, google it.) Years later while reading Flags of My Fathers, I discovered that Robert Leader was on top of that hill on Iwo Jima the day six men raised the U.S. flag. He was sent there to use his art skills to sketch the terrain and Japanese positions. That speaks volumes about the men of his generation. He never mentioned being on the hill near the men in the famous photo in his class. Me? I would work that into the first two minutes of every conversation I had. BTW, during the previous year two dorm fires occurred. The school decided to ban student-built lofts even though there was no indication that wood lofts were part of the problem.
29 Headlines in The Observer that day: “‘Annie Hall’ (Diane) Keaton, (Richard) Dreyfuss take top Oscars” and a speaker on campus who “Predicts Women Priests.”
31 As noted previously, for cartoon 12, freshmen taking Chemistry were haunted by a seven-questions weekly quiz given by Notre Dame legend Emil Hoffman. I finally impressed my roommates when Emil mentioned my cartoon in his class. It compelled him to explain the origins of the Friday quiz. He was a young, single professor at the time, and it was his way to keep students out of the bars and restaurants on Thursday nights.
See the first five classic strips. Check back monthly for more classic Molarity strips. Molarity Redux, the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends, also is posted monthly. For those new strips, check out the cartoon archives.