JH: You started drawing “Between Friends” when you were in your thirties, and your characters were the same age. What made you decide to let them age in real-time with you?
SBL: The strip evolved as my influences changed. When I began “Between Friends,” there were no children in it, for example…The strip launched in February 1994 and my son was born the following April. My daughter was born about two years later. Eventually the influence of having small kids in the house became hard to ignore, so I introduced children into the strip. Over the years my perspective has changed … my kids have gotten older, I’ve gotten older. So the things that I’m writing about reflect that: my characters began wearing reading glasses, they talk about retirement, they get heartburn, they can’t drink caffeine after 3:00 pm, they deal with aspects of the empty nest.
Jennifer Hayden interviews cartoonist Sandra Bell-Lundy,
creator of the Between Friends comic strip.
