A Sick Elephant retrospective

Longtime readers will remember, seven years ago, when I posted several strips in a row that all seemed to be variations on the same joke.

What started as a way to explore how multiple punchlines could stem from the same premise became a sprawling, months-long adventure that referenced (whether you knew it or not) every single time I’d ever featured any elephant in Wondermark.

Because, as it turned out, most of those characters were played by the same few elephant actors! This is a recurring joke from my book collections: all the elephant strips are reviewed by a theater critic, evaluating the latest performance of the classically-trained Norbert.

In fact, when I pitch the books to folks, I say, “You can start reading with any volume. There’s no continuity, except for exactly one running gag.” The theater critic watches Norbert’s career rise and fall, as he acts in episode after episode.

Revisiting the storyline on GoComics

As you may know, I also run Wondermark comics regularly at GoComics. I’ve been working my way through the entire archive, slightly faster than real time, over there for almost a decade.

And now… The first “Check out my sick elephant” strip hit on August 4, and of course, the entire saga will now continue to unspool over the course of months.

I’m excited to watch the commenters discover what’s happening! They are a special breed of their own, on GoComics. Follow along over there if you like!

Remembering the origins

Recently, I returned from Gen Con in Indianapolis! It was an auspicious return to a show where almost exactly seven years ago that storyline began — at Gen Con itself.

That day in 2018, I arrived in Indy after a late flight from California. It was after midnight, but I still wanted to try and get a comic posted before the convention began.

On the hunt for a simple but funny concept, I batted ideas back and forth with my friend and boothmate Sam Logan, who had also arrived on a late flight from the West Coast (in his case, Vancouver) and was in a similarly punchy mood.

The phrase “sick elephant” somehow arose as something that could be interpreted in different ways, and the two of us went back and forth for a long while, trying to come up with ever-weirder punchlines to make each other laugh.

Eventually, so we wouldn’t forget the ideas we’d come up with, I pulled out my phone and recorded a voice memo.

This week, I was able to unearth that recording.

Enjoy, for the first time posted publicly… The very first conversation that birthed the entire Wondermark "sick elephant" saga. The first voice you hear is mine; the second, Sam's. @samandfuzzy.com

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— Wondermark Comics (@wondermark.com) August 17, 2025 at 4:45 PM

(My thanks to Sam for whipping up some cartoon heads of us both for this video!)

That summer of 2018, the storyline continued for months, and I put together a complete book collection that December.

Sick elephants were also the theme of that year’s Wondermark Calendar — which would become the last installment of the calendar series (at least so far). A few months into 2019, I was offered a job that radically changed my working availability, and my pace of making comics would slow for some time.

I’m as proud of that storyline as anything I’ve done with Wondermark. Now that that job has ended and I’m answerable only to myself again, I’m glad to look back on it as a reminder of how much fun all this can be creatively, given the right circumstances.

If you’re a newer reader or haven’t seen the whole saga — or simply want to revisit it with me! — start here. I’ve added links below each comic where there’s a reference to something that will add context.