March 24th, 2013

In honor of National Puppy Day—March 23

by Rick Kirkman And Jerry Scott

(Click to biggify)

I know what you’re thinking…The MacPherson’s don’t have a puppy.

True. Not for lack of trying by Zoe and Hammie. They’re certainly inventive when it comes to trying to get Mom and Dad to get a dog.

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As a practical consideration, as small as comics are printed in newspapers these days, there’s barely enough room to put all the characters in a scene plus dialogue anymore. I’ve had to come in closer on shots of the characters, crop bodies, squeeze every millimeter of drawings that I can into those little panels. Believe me, it’s not easy when you have little kids and adults in the same panels.

(Click to biggify)

In our own family, we’ve had dogs since before we had kids, and have had many over the years. So the pressure on the home front for the MacPhersons to get a puppy has been great. For now, the dog situation will have to remain kind of like Charlie Brown and the football. Zoe and Hammie and Wren will have to step up their game if their going to convince Darryl and Wanda. Of course, their chances of getting a puppy will improve if newspapers ever decide to go back to giving comic strips the space they had even at the time Baby Blues started back in 1990. You might want to express that to editors.

In the meantime, check out the National Puppy Day website and their Facebook page.

In honor of National Puppy Day, I’d like to share some shots of our beloved Moose when he was a puppy. We lost him a couple years ago to leukemia. (Click to biggify)