Comic Series
Sundry Comix
Da Boids
Nora Talbot
Larry Lagoon's
Fanzine Blues
Larry Lagoon's
Comic Dreams
Larry Lagoon's
Funny Pages
Suzy
by Richard O'Brien &
Bob Vojtko
Low Budget Funnies
by Bob Vojtko
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.
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.
Most of the Suzy comic strips feature one or two of the main characters. Suzy herself appears in almost the entire run. However, there are a few episodes where one of the other characters like Prissy or Helmut get the spotlight all to themselves. Even more rare are those strips that include three or more characters from the cast. Being the huge fan of Vojtko's cartooning that I am, these are a few of my favorites simply because it's such fun to see the whole group together interacting in the same panel or strip.
Suzy was a great role model for young girls growing up in the mid-1980's. She aspired to be President, she was always concerned about the issues of the day, and her best friend was a little boy named Randall. A little younger than the daily comic strip's namesake, Randall aspired to be Suzy's boyfriend. But he was just being an eternal optimistic. He was just being himself. Suzy's fancy usually lay elsewhere. Randall was just there to support her, help her, be an all-around nice guy, and perhaps most important, be her straight man. And for a little guy, he sure did the job like a pro.
Freddie the Fibber is the heartthrob of Suzy. She's madly enamored with this flakey hipster but unfortunately he barely knows she's alive. He earned his nickname by his deceitful, unreliable behavior. In fact, his edgy, irresponsible demeanor is what makes him so attractive to all the girls in the strip. To make matters worse for Suzy, he's in love with Prissy. And Prissy loves him too—up to a point—but her own self-image remains the uncontested most important object of her attention.
By far the majority of the gags in the Suzy comic strip are character-driven, derived from their personalities and their unique perspectives on the world. But on rare occasions there's a strip that breaks the suspension of disbelief, like the one above where Freddie is literally caught in the web of his own lies.
The feminist side of Suzy was careful to question the traditional roles and goals of women in the mid-80's. But she found baby Helmut irresistible and jumped at the chance to babysit for him. Besides his unusual name Helmut was a typical baby boy. He was cute, inquisitive, and delighted in learning every new thing as he explored the world around him. Like other famous comic strip babies, Helmut was more of a deep thinker than a talker. His candid observations about his older playmates were often wise beyond his years.
The Suzy comic strip was set in the mid-1980's middle-class America. Although most of the gags were character-driven, at times the political and cultural megatrends of the day made their way into the strip. Most often it was worry about a nuclear disaster or quips about women's liberation. It's pretty interesting to read these particular entries today, from the perspective of twenty-something years later. The nuclear threat continues to haunt the world and although there's been some progress in the fight for women's equality, the need for advocacy is far from over.
I'd forgotten, but Izod casual clothing was red hot in the mid-1980s. The little green alligator logo is really the Lacoste icon, but due to the two companies' partnership at the time the gator mistakenly became associated with the Izod brand.
The Sunday Suzy comic strips are a special treat. O'Brien and Vojtko had more panels to build up to the punchline, as in the mouse-be-gone strip with Freddie the Fibber. The extra space also enabled gags that relied on a pause like the one with Randall's essay about Suzy. And of course the addition of color itself added to the gag possibilities as in the strip with Helmut.
Thus concludes our spotlight on a rare comic strip gem from the mid-1980s. It's a real treat for me to feature these wonderful comics by Richard O'Brien and Bob Vojtko. The full collection of Suzy's daily and Sunday comic strips is available in a perfect bound softcover book on Lulu.com. While you're there be sure to check out Richard O'Brien's latest novel The One After Snelling published through Ramble House.
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