Ask A Cartoonist: Best Friends’ Day!

It’s Best Friends’ Day!  We owe so much to our friends, so I asked our cartoonists to share their feelings about friendship! 

Bill Griffith, Zippy the Pinhead:

Clearly, friendship is a good thing. A very nice thing….so very nice, in fact, that the niceness of it triggers an eruption of Mr. The Toad in me—-

Friendship—the Dark Side!

John Rose, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith:

Jughaid’s best friend is Jamey and I really enjoy drawing the strips they appear in together. Often, they are getting into trouble in school or plotting together about causing mischief. I especially enjoy drawing the strips when they are playing outside and having outdoor adventures, like rock-hopping, climbing trees and hanging out in their treehouse. They remind me so much of my two brothers and I when we were children.

Mort Walker, Beetle Bailey:

My best friend in high school was a guy named David Hornaday. We did everything together and had a great time even though he had his faults.

I drove by his house one morning to take him to a golf tournament. His mother said he was still in bed so I went to wake him up. When I spoke to him he just rolled over, turned his back to me and went on sleeping, so I lifted his cot and poured him out on the floor. He just grabbed his pillow and went on sleeping.
I said to him, “David, you ought to be in a comic strip.” That stuck in my mind and when I created Beetle I used David as the inspiration…a slim, likable guy who
likes to goof-off. It made David famous in his home town and they ran his picture on the front page of the newspaper along with a cartoon of Beetle. I don’t know if David liked it but he had to llive with his creation.

Bill Holbrook, Kevin & Kell, On the Fastrack, and Safe Havens:

Dethany and Fi are friends…in the most expansive usage of the word.

And yes, Fi really does have a Facebook pagenow: https://www.facebook.com/FistulaBreech/

Alex Hallatt, Arctic Circle:

My best friends are people who put their phone away when we meet up.

Ron Ferdinand, Dennis the Menace:

In this wistful daily panel, Hank really captures the timeless friendship between Dennis and Mr. Wilson.

David Reddick, Intelligent Life:

Sometimes friendship knows no boundaries!