From March of 1996, still on the phone. Many of your comments yesterday were interesting. I know we have had a similar conversation before, but these days I am contemplating doing something more, or different, with the “second cast” of A&J. Bill Bickel’s suggestion was a good one: turn the Sunday strip over to Gene, et al. As he noted, this would not be unprecedented in the history of newspaper comics. “Buz Sawyer and His Pal Roscoe Sweeney” springs immediately to my mind. When I was a boy reading The Atlanta Journal, I preferred the humorous Sunday antics of Roscoe and his “Baby Sister” to the daily adventures of Navy pilot Buz Sawyer. However, there are a couple of problems as far as A&J and Gene are concerned. The lives of the coast people have been a continuing kind of story. To confine them to a single day, even a Sunday, would change all that, I think. More important, this solution is very “old school” in a time when the industry is reading tea leaves and pushing the envelope. Apropos, Neal in Bawstun suggested making the adventures of Gene and Mary Lou into a Web-only comic. I think that is a good suggestion, too. (My editor Reed just choked on his morning croissant.)
