May 11th, 2011

Holidays

by Jerry Scott & Jim Borgman

My wife noted (with a certain pointedness) that we didn’t do a strip themed to Mother’s Day this year. Don’t look for one on Father’s Day either, I’ll tell you right now. We sort of skated past those holidays this year in the commotion of assembling our upcoming Sunday Brunch book. Our little brains only have so much room.

Maybe she’s right, though. In a strip like Zits we can choose to ignore Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July, but Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are right down the middle of our plate. Maybe we look clueless when Hi is taking Lois to brunch. On the other hand, those holiday strip ideas can get hackneyed and I’ve sometimes wondered if readers appreciate a departure from the expected theme. He told his wife, to no avail.

When Jerry and I work on the strip we seldom think about the publication date beyond a vague sense of the flow of the year. Jeremy gets out of school sometime in the late spring and starts back to school in the late summer. We acknowledge Christmas because it’s too big to ignore, and often nod to Halloween because it’s on a teenager’s radar screen, but other holidays pass without mention. I could tell you it’s because of our international clients (Zits runs in 45 different countries), but really it’s just because holiday strips mostly suck.