First off, let me say that the opinions I expressed via Dave’s mouth are neither my own, nor Dave’s. It is the opinion of some people out there, of course, that recycling is some load of crap and doesn’t impact anything. I am not one of those people. Christ, I work for a company that aids in exam prep for sustainable green building… I couldn’t agree with you MORE that recycling is important. I just needed to get from point A to point B, and to make that work, I had to have Dave take up a contrary position to Greg. The point of this comic wasn’t to denounce recycling – it was to imply that Greg cared more about the fact that the glass bottle could be used as a future beer receptacle than he did about recycling it. When Greg says “Screw recycling”, it’s not meant to imply that he doesn’t recycle, or doesn’t care about recycling… it’s more of just emphasizing that it’s less important to him than the alternative.
The opinions expressed in the comic are not always my own. Occasionally, I will have a character express a contrary viewpoint, just so that I can arrive at a desired punchline. If I had to keep my characters within my own very limited point of view, it wouldn’t make for an interesting read… everyone would be the same person. Sometimes the whole point of character-based writing is to write from a perspective you don’t agree with. Now, the real Dave probably recycles just like the rest of us… but I’ve enjoyed writing Comic Dave as a contrarian bastard, so to me, it followed that he would take issue with being reprimanded for recycling. Even that was difficult, because I had very little to form an anti-recycling argument besides an old episode of a TV show I saw many years ago, so I just went with that.
More than anything in the world, I hate having to explain punchlines. (That’s not true, actually. I hate BADGERS more than anything in the world. Stupid little critters.) That said, this is more of explaining the ROAD to a punchline, so I think it’s okay in this instance. :) It should, at the very least, give you a little insight into what goes on in my head when I have to come up with a new comic idea every day. But just remember… not everything my characters say reflect my own viewpoints.