Between Friends by Sandra Bell-Lundy begins running in The Tennessean on March 1.
Tennessean reporter Rachel Wegner discussed with Sandra the strips’ origins…
Three decades ago, Sandra Bell-Lundy was frequenting the office of a newspaper editor in Buffalo, New York, with her latest comic art in tow. And every time, she asked him to run her comic.
“The editor, he never said yes for four years, but whenever I went to see him, he would talk to me,” she said.
He eventually agreed to run her work in 1990 — a daily strip called “Between Friends” — and a handful of other papers picked up her work. She set a goal to get syndicated.
and part of Sandra’s purpose with the comic strip:
With the challenge of keeping up with writing and illustrating her daily comics, Bell-Lundy said she has enjoyed developing each character’s distinct personality and adding subtle changes over the years.
“This is still a dream job for me to do because it’s your own little world,” she said. “The storylines that I do, I never plan them. I just write it as I go along. It’s always a little bit of a surprise to me.”
A three week episode in February featured some growth of two supporting characters, Helen and Grant (above images). On Facebook Sandra felt the need to respond to reader comments on those strips:
I don’t usually comment on the reactions to strips by readers…I figure everyone interprets things their own way and que sera. But I’m going to chime in here because I actually felt bad about all the negative remarks about Grant that have been posted during this series. (I know he’s just a comic character but I have little attachments to these personalities)…
Those strips began here at Comics Kingdom or here at Arcamax.
It’s a very good sequence about, as The Tennessean headline says, characters evolving.