I’ve been drawing Jenny (the character in the third panel) pretty much since I started on Sally Forth. For someone to make a comment like this leads me to believe – first of all that they aren’t too familiar with the strip – but mostly that it’s jarring for them to see someone who’s not white in a comic strip.
Let’s back up: When Charles Schulz introduced Franklin in 1968 it was HUGE, primarily because it was in the height of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement – Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated just months earlier.
In 2018 mainstream comic strips are still weirdly lacking in reflecting the make-up of our country (and Francesco Marciuliano and I are quite aware of this). The idea of a token character is such a cliche these days (see Token Black from South Park) that Francesco has made a point of not introducing our ONE character of “fill in the non-white here” but a variety of characters. We try not to be overt about it, but for some readers, we’re obviously bowing to our liberal overlords and introducing the dreaded “D-word” – DIVERSITY 😱
I could go on, but deadlines are looming…
To wrap up – That Sally Forth NOT having an all white cast in 2018 can somehow be seen as a political statement is a weird way to look at the ink blots I’ve put down – a Rorschach test that says more about the viewer than anything else.
-Jim Keefe