Sally Forth Comic Con Read @ Home: Day One
Today officially starts San Diego Comic Con and no one can go because, well, *gestures to everything.*
But just as SDCC is recreating the experience online this year—including never getting a purchase ticket for the Funko booth but minus collapsing on the showroom floor in heat exhaustion from your costume only for security to say you have to drop dead outside—we are replicating it here every day of the con with a reprint of each week of the 2018 Sally Forth Comic Con storyline (AKA “Sally and Starlee and the Moonbeams”).
So let’s do this and remember—at least this year you can make your own much cheaper, much better nacho snack.
Sally Forth Summer Mind Travel: Sally’s Dad
Back in 2006 I introduced the characters of Sally’s mom Laura and Sally’s younger sister Jackie. I also mentioned that Sally’s dad had passed away suddenly when she was just 12.
In the years since Sally has oft-mentioned her dad, usually in hagiographic terms and in comparison to whatever disagreements she was having with her mom at the time. Then two years ago we learned that when her dad died, Sally went through a very difficult (read: highly angry/punchy) adjustment period in sixth grade that some readers referred to as the “Sal Wrecks Shit Up” phase.
But today is the very first day we actually see her dad in the strip. He is 38 in this memory. Sally is 11.
Sally Forth Summer Mind Travel: My Wandering Brother
My brother Marcello and I have always been long solo walkers (me because I’m an introvert and Marcello because it let him make friends with 432 new people and three squirrels). But when Marcello was very young he would just wander off without telling anyone, no matter where he was.
And so during our tour of San Simeon (Hearst Castle) in 1980 my seven-year-brother hooked up with another group, whether because he was lost in his thoughts, the groups passed through each other and a little kid got confused, or he longed for the thrill of new conversation that didn’t involve “Don’t touch that.” As far as we could tell, Marcello was with his new group of vacation buddies for a good half hour before he realized the mix-up just as his bus was taking off without us (though perhaps his general newfound sense of tranquility should have tipped him off earlier). By that time we were frantically looking for him. However, I should add that we didn’t realize he was gone until a little later than we perhaps should have. But it was 1980, people. That’s basically still the 70s. And in the 70s anything could happen and you just said, “But everything turned out okay, so it’s all good.”
Sally Forth Summer Mind Travel: Colby the Common Shrew
“Colby the Common Shrew
He’s not simply copyrighted
But also trademarked in perpetuity
For me and you!”
Following the success of Walt Disney’s “Plane Crazy” starring Mickey Mouse, Colby the Common Shrew made his very first appearance in Praxinoscope Studio’s animated short “Non Coptors Mentis” (first titled “Leonardo’s Aerial Screwed” when initially planned as a “sextoon”). The half-reel short (popular in the late 20s when studios wanted to sneak a second short into a one-reel, usually a “Chesterfield Tobacco Tots” cartoon) featured Colby attaching a rotor system to the top of his head only for his neck to immediately snap off, with the remaining 5 minutes and 52 seconds of the six-minute short featuring Colby’s severed, screaming head flying through a playground, daycare center, and children’s birthday party. Colby’s twin brother—also named Colby so the parents wouldn’t have to pay for two birth certificates—took over the role after that and appeared in dozens of beloved cartoons up until his final appearance in 1984’s “Hit by a Truck.”
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