Life after 60 may not be all laughs. But it’s proving to be fertile territory for the wit and insights of Andy Landorf and John Colquhoun, the funny creators of The New 60, a twice-a-week comic strip now in its second year.
The strip centers on four 60-something pals, who often gather at their local diner to share stories, commiserate and poke fun at each other. The diner’s waitress, also in their age group, is a recurring character, as are an assortment of family members and innocent bystanders. Readers often see the strip kidding about marriages in midlife, technology, money, work, health, social media, Social Security, aging and the boomer generation’s millennial kids.
The New 60 is loosely based on the daily lives and foibles of the former ad industry vets, Landorf, 66, and Colquhoun, 60. It’s available on their website, as well as on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and several print weeklies in Westchester County, N.Y., which Landorf calls home.
Next Avenue recently interviewed the creators.
And what was the genesis of ‘The New 60’ strip?
Landorf: I had this thought: What about making a comic about people in our age group? I called John with great trepidation, thinking he’d say, what a terrible idea. But he liked it. Go ahead, John, you take over.
Colquhoun: Yeah, at the time, it wasn’t much more than ‘Hey, would you like to do a cartoon strip?’ and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s an interesting idea.’ So I said, ‘Why don’t we get together and talk about the characters, think up a back story for them, see where the story line’s going and whether we can come up with enough material?’
