The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee creator John Hambrock has added a new character to the line up – a girl with the smarts to outwit Edison. The character’s name is Katie Franklin character and she’s appeared in months past, but sounds like she’ll become more of a regular.
From The Behind the Scenes blog:
We’ve been feeling for a while now that it would be good for Edison to have another smart kid in the strip to act as a sort of nemesis. (He is clearly outclassing all the members of his family in the brain department and needs someone on his own level for tension) And I suggested that maybe his nemesis should be a girl. A really, really, really smart girl. One that could rock his world.
So we began working on this girl.
Thank so much for the shout out Alan!
Katie makes another appearance in today’s strip (1-9-14).
Love ‘Edison’! John’s art and humor are top-notch. We all know a Katie Franklin, so this’ll make for some fun angst.
Enjoy reading Edison. What a hoot!
Sounds like a great addition. Should be fun.
Great idea, John. It will open up multitudes of story angles for you. You’ll undoubtedly gain a few more fans too in the bargain.
IYes. the girl is a perfect addition.
Charles Schultz had an animal and JH has an animal; Charles Schultz had a girl, Lucy, And then he added a little one, Sally, and also had PigPen.
To me the main similarity to these two terrific cartoon artists is their consistency in developing a character here and there.
When each of these two started they seem to have restricted the number of characters and as they developed them, they put more individual personality – John’s case, the lab rat became more personable and with a sense of humor; and for Charles Schultz on Snoopy, especially, he gradually altered his looks from being adorable to being a “real character” of a dawg.
Then Schultz added Linus and Schroeder and others..
John Hambrock, while having his own style of beautiful drawing and a nice set of characters, has something in addition to what Charles Schultz had, it seems to me.
He has a wicked sense of humor and also a brilliant mind – both politically and scientifically.
By calling on this and by illustrating these gorgeous cartoons in color…..this is by far a truly outstanding story-strip.
By stringing us readers along, but providing interest every day (really hard to do, for sure) John Hambrock’s cartoon works are not only fun to read, but lead you to wanting to know more, sort or like the story-teller in A Thousand and One Arabian Nights..
While it is nice to have the Sunday strip that is always a different story line, it makes me crazy to have to miss from before that, till the next weekly story line. days later!
Let us hope that newspapers find ways to survive so that we can continue to enjoy this wonderful strip by John Hambrock.