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Hey, ladies, do you have a best buddy? Or a few great gal pals?
Of course you do. You dish over coffee, shop with abandon and share secrets no one else knows.
And you’ll relate to “Between Friends,” a comic strip that follows Susan, Kim and Maeve, 40-somethings who navigate through caffeinated adventures dealing with men, motherhood, relationships, exercise and the workplace.
The three characters give different takes on life. One is recently married with a stepson, another has an adopted child and the third is single.
“Between Friends,” launched in 1994 and running in papers such as the Houston Chronicle, Toronto Star and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, joins The World Herald’s comics lineup Monday. We spoke to creator Sandra Bell-Lundy of Canada about the strip, her creative process and her love of comics.
Q. Where do you come up with ideas for your comic strip?
When I first started putting a strip together, it was very loosely based on myself and my friends. Now the women have developed into their own characters.
I might read the newspaper or magazine or see something online or something may have happened with one of my friends or family. Then I sort of take it from there.
Q. Do you usually make those into a story?
I do have some individual gags, but I usually write in short, sequential series. It’s almost like a theme for the week.
Q. Do you ever get writer’s block?
Oh, yes. I’m kind of in a slump right now. Every once in a while it’s hard. You spend the whole week sitting there day after day trying to come up with something. Then the deadline comes and pressure sort of makes you create.
Q. Do you work ahead?
When my strip debuted, it was when my first child was born. I had a nine-week lead time, then it evaporated and I’ve been scrambling ever since. My son’s 15 now.
Q. Your strip is most popular with women. Is that what you set out to do?
You write what you know. I didn’t set out with the idea that this was going to be my target audience. It’s my perspective that I’m writing from and the age group of my audience is similar to me.
Women are by far my largest audience. I do have male readers, and when they write to me it’s usually because they have the hots for me.
Q. How did you get into cartooning?
I’ve always been a big comics fan. I always read the comics when I was a kid. I was into “Peanuts” and “Archie Comics.”
As a kid, I would draw comics. When I got older, I would draw comics to lampoon my friends. If there was some dating crisis, I would do a cartoon for fun and send it to my friends.
That’s where the nucleus of the “Between Friends” idea came from. It’s always something that I’ve done for fun.
Q. So “Between Friends” has been syndicated for 15 years?
I self-syndicated before that, in 1990. I sold to about four newspapers here in southern Ontario. It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long.
Q. What job did you have before doing the comic?
Nothing great. At the time I was syndicated, I was working at the duty-free store in Buffalo, on the Canadian side.
Q. You like your job better now?
That’s an understatement. It was a job, you know? That’s all I could get. It was a 12-hour shift, but those kinds of hours gave me big chunks of time to work on my strip.
I remember my husband and I talking about me going back to school but I couldn’t think of a darn thing to go study. Nothing interested me except the cartoons I was doing, and my husband said, “Why aren’t you trying that?”
Q. What cartoonists do you follow?
There’s so many cartoonists I admire. I admire men cartoonists, but I’m very into women cartoonists.
Some of them are Stephanie Piro, Kim Warp, (Iranian cartoonist) Marjane Satrapi and (Scottish cartoonist) Kieran Meehan.
Q. How would you advise aspiring cartoonists?
I would say write about what you know. And try to get as much advice from people in the business as I could. I would definitely be checking the Web and see all the different things people are doing.
You have to draw a lot and you also have to write a lot. The drawing’s important, but it’s second to the writing. I spend far more time writing than I do drawing. When I’m at the drawing board, I’m even editing (the writing in) my strips.
Contact the writer:
444-1557, kevin.coffey@owh.com
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