Midnight Fiction Comix
Sundry Comix
Da Boids -1 Page
Nora Talbot -3 Pages
Those Non-Reproducing Blues
4 Pages
Space and Time
6 pages
Media Report Comix
11 pages
Horse Opera
7 Pages
Simon Smith and Ronald Moss
7 Pages
Trapped on Jupiter
5 Pages
Larry Lagoon's
Fanzine Blues
4 Pages
Comic Dreams
2 Pages
Farlie Fan in Cream City 9 Pages
Richard O'Brien has written gags for comedians Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Victor Borge and many others. He's written almost 40 books and sold ideas to a number of gag cartoonists. From 1979 to 1981 he wrote the syndicated comic strip Koky.
Bob Vojtko is a long-time gag cartoonist whose work has appeared in dozens of magazines including Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, Reader's Digest, Harvard Business Review, Nickelodeon, and Woman's World. He was assistant to Tom Batiuk on the John Darling comic strip in the 1980s.
In 1984/85 O'Brien and Vojtko developed Suzy, a comic strip featuring a pre-adolescent girl growing up in the mid-1980s. Universal Syndicate was initially interested, but ultimately passed on the strip. The strip was purchased by a syndicate that sold primarily to overseas weekly. OBrien and Vojtko produced about six months worth of dailies and Sundays, before they eventually ended the strip. Sales were low, but it was never clear if it was due to a lack of interest from editors or from lack of adequate marketing from the syndicate.
Fortunately, the full collection of Suzy comic strips is now available in a softbound book through Ramble House Books on Lulu.com. For the next several weeks, MF.com will feature a few of these rare comic strips along with a little background information.
Backstory
Suzy of course, is the star of the strip. She's a little girl that's way older than a toddler, but not quite a teenager yet. She watches too much TV (remember this is 1985, before the triple double-u) and has begun noticing boys, her appearance, and the trends and political climate of the day. Recurring scenes with Suzy include receiving letters from a secret admirer, wasting time watching television, babysitting Helmut, fantasizing about Freddy the fibber, comparing herself to Prissy, and dreaming of being President.