Sally Forth Week: When You Submit a Comic Strip Story for Publication before Social Distancing and School Closings
Because comic strip scripts and art have to be submitted several weeks (or, in the case of Sunday comics, a few months) ahead of time for publication, sometimes we cartoonists can be behind the curve on things. Like a pandemic.
Naturally, you might be asking, “Well, why couldn’t you just redo those strips?” That’s because—as mentioned above—the necessary deadlines rarely allow for that. Now, some strips have indeed managed to address the current “normal” sooner than us, but for us to have made such necessary revisions for the current run of strips would have been like someone asking you to redo your last several weeks of work before you left the office, but in the next hour.
That said, we did throw out four additional weeks that were to start running mid-April (Sunday deadlines did not make such possible) to better reflect our world, meaning there will be no school dance and while people will go to an office next week that gets rectified to working at home rather quickly. (Perhaps just at the exact moment people do start going back to the office, at which point we just throw our hands up in the air and make Lou the Magical Gnome the main star of our strip.)
Yes, it can be reasonably argued that people go to the comics to escape reality. But what is occurring has reshaped our world to such a remarkable degree that to have our characters remain in the typical comic-strip time bubble would strain any connection they have to not only reality but also relatability, and they already engage in mind-reading, time jumps, and Ted Forth as is.
Be safe. Be well. AND STAY HOME.
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