Navigating the ERD

I have a many-to-many problem. Apparently my gift for complicating relationships applies in more than one sphere; it took several readings of Prof. Fulton's warnings about avoiding overcomplication to rein in my database ambitions to the point where I can use it for these exercises.

That wild horse did get tamed, however, or at least hobbled. My wee webcomics database is just three tables with minimal attributes and I've been able to produce an ERD that looks sensible. It responded nicely to normalization and I think I'll be able to go forward with it for the next units.

That's fine for the exercises (I hope!), but it leaves me wanting. I perused a lot of ERDs for this unit, including many of the ridiculous number of examples at databaseanswers.org and I didn't see what I wanted - a way to diagram (and thus explain) the complicated relationship between creator, comic, and strip (instance of a comic) that comes from the common practice of doing cross-overs and guest strips.

I don't need to know how now, but it's a niggling question. I believe that I understand the ideas behind normalization, but I can't picture how to do it on this more complex structure - it's something that's just going to have be tried. I'd like to find a series of database design tutorials that are even more hands-on than the resources I've seen in class. And then I'd like to find the time to do them...

This late, late post has been back-dated to keep things in order.