Singing the Baby Blues

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDUKzdidzQo[/youtube]

This is a great video interview with syndicated comic strip “Baby Blues” creators Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott about the genesis of the strip.

I’m fortunate to be able to call Rick a good friend. We have been on many USO tours together to places like Germany, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even drew together on the U.S.S. Enterprise in the middle of the Arabian Gulf. He’s an incredible talent… incidentally he was honored with the NCS Reuben Award for “Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year” last May. A well deserved honor.

Baby Blues has a special place in me and The Lovely Anna’s hearts. It began on the very day our first daughter The Animated Elizabeth was born. We were living in Atlanta at the time, and this comic strip debuted with the birth of daughter Zoe in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on the same our daughter came into the world. Anna would cut many of the strips out and save them for Elizabeth’s scrapbook.

Years later when we joined the NCS, Anna was only star struck by a few of the cartoonists, but Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott were the ones she was really over-the-moon to meet. I think we creeped Rick out pretty badly at first, since he seemed to get this deer-in-headlights look on his face when we would approach and would turn and walk quickly away. He still does that but eventually stops since he knows I won;t let him go on any more USO tours if he doesn’t talk to us.

That’s a joke, of course. He’s a good friend and a great cartoonist.