Judge parker Process

Here's the latest week of Judge Parker strips in pencil, ready for my inking fingers to finish them. Its finally goodbye to the Dude, the little squirrel who played stowaway on the RV for the last years it seems of the strip. I enjoyed drawing him the most of everything or everyone in the strip the past story line---which took place over the last year--but was less than a week in strip time. Sam couldn't even raise a beard in that time. Thinking back over the six years on the strip I don't think even a year has passed in strip time. Its never snowed, and rained maybe two times? No holidays or birthdays or anything to mark the passing of the seasons though I do draw a X-mas strip each year. Everybody is driving a 2010 car, as that is the ref I had when I started from the previous artist, Ed Barreto.

Everyone has an iPhone 4 at least, if not a 6, yet we never saw them buy or upgrade---that happens between panels I guess. In the old days things didn't change much on a strip like this. The poor folks still eat in that same lame, weird 70's kitchen with the planters on each side of the kitchen table--ugh! Man I hate drawing that weird set-up, which I'm sure looked spiffy in 73.

Who knows really if anyone but a few old time readers or the feverish message board trolls pays any attention to this type of thing--but as the artist on the strip this is part of the gig. I notice other strips in the heyday of continuity and soap strips did have plenty of change of seasons in the stories and I think that added another layer to them and made them more realistic. Sophie is 16 and has been for 6 years, Woody asked me to mature her a bit, which I have but I guess she'll be stuck there for another 20 years---if the strips lasts that long in papers.

Looks like we are about to revisit Derek, AKA Bender Blaster Master, Sophie's boyfriend( or was he) and that storyline from my first year or so on on the strip. Excerpts of that story was used in an anti-bullying comic.