Happy 40th Anniversary, Sally Forth!

On this very date in 1982, Sally Forth entered our lives. Okay, it didn’t technically enter my life until 1997 when I was hired to write the strip, simply because it did not run in my hometown paper. (Instead, we got a comic titled Boner’s Ark, which is just wonderful by name alone and makes one wonder if at some time point their were efforts to utilize the word “priapism” into a syndicated feature.) But 40 years is a truly remarkable achievement, all owed to the strip’s creator, original writer, and artist, Greg Howard. Congratulations to you, dear sir!

Of course, a lot has changed with the strip since it premiered four decades ago, including the artist, the writer, the cast, the strictly Esperanto dialogue, and the comic’s original name, They Die By Their Swords. And what better way to capture the strip’s full history than by having today’s comic directly call back to a very early 1982 strip. Now, looking back at that early strip, which is decidedly of an era, one can choose to point out that Sally Forth was very groundbreaking for its time in its depiction of a working mom, which is very true. But one can also look at that very strip and say, “Now just what the friggin hell is with that ID Network Evil Lives Here murderous side glance, Ted, all because you don’t know how to peel back the corner of the apple brown betty in your Swanson’s Hungry Man?! Especially since Sally clearly worked a longer day than you did because you’re already home, just standing around lost in the foyer in office corduroy pants that do NOT say ‘future promotion.’ And don’t give Sally that ‘But your cooking always tastes better’ or ‘I didn’t want to mess up your kitchen’ or ‘Well, maybe if you showed me how to boil water I would but why do I have to when you already know how to do it’ because clearly I am venting years of frustration with my own dad and not Ted Forth at all right now so let’s just move on.”

That all curiously said, the actual very first Sally Forth comic is below, printed in Greg Howard’s own hometown newspaper (and a huge thanks to The Daily Cartoonist for locating it)…

I actually tried to use this strip as the callback in today’s comic, but all I could come up with is a police officer on the other end saying, “We traced the phone call. Apparently your office is still using party lines. I mean, wow, that can’t be good for business.”

But 40 years. Seriously, a huge WOW. I want to thank King Features—and especially then Editor-in-Chief Jay Kennedy, who I will always keep in my memory—for taking a chance on me, not regretting taking a chance on me when they really should have those first few years, and letting me be a part of all this the last 25 years even if for no other reason than, “Well, Maraculianiono seems to at least remember the characters’ names.” I want to thank Greg Howard who, upon hearing I was going to assume writing duties, did not say, “Absolutely not.” I want to thank Craig MacIntosh, a brilliant illustrator and one of the most genuinely decent people one could ever meet, for not killing me during our 15 years working together. I want to thank Jim Keefe, a truly preternaturally gifted artist who can draw anything suggested which has led me to suggest just about everything, often at the last minute, and has made me feel extremely fortunate by continuing my streak of co-creating with yet another remarkably good soul.

And I want to thank you for reading our strip, whether it’s regularly, infrequently, simply to make fun of, or because you keep confusing us with Mary Worth. (How on earth did Wilbur somehow convince Estelle to go on that cruise with him? Does he have some dark intel on her?) This career has been my dream job since I was a kid, when most of my dreams involved just surviving the killer bees. You have made all of this possible. And if sometimes I seem a bit flippant or sarcastic about such a milestone, please just remember I have serious problems, but I am mathematically, inaccurately 600% sincere in my never-ending gratitude and love for all everyone has made possible.

Thank you.