[heroic music] ♪ [heroic music continues] ♪ [heroic music continues] ♪ [heroic music continues] ♪ - Hello and welcome to "Comic Culture."

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is writer Francesco Marciuliano.

Francesco, welcome to "Comic Culture."

- Thank you very much.

Happy to be here.

- Now you are the writer of one of my favorite syndicated newspaper strips, "Sally Forth," and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you ended up with that plumb writing assignment?

- Oh, okay.

At first I thought that was gonna end with one of my favorite strips, "Mary Worth."

It's like, "Oh, we've made a mistake here."

I had been submitting strips out of college, and I sent a strip about a couple, which, you know, there were no strips about families or couples in the newspaper.

And I happened to do it just when they were looking for a new writer for "Sally Forth."

The original creator, Craig MacIntosh, had sold his half back to the syndicate, and they were looking for someone, and they called me and essentially said, "Would you like to do "Sally Forth"?"

I think I agreed between Sally and Forth, and I will say this, "Sally Forth" was not in a paper on Long Island.

I was kind of unfamiliar with the strip, just the broader strokes.

So they sent me nine years worth all on paper in a giant box, 'cause this was 1997.

So I had to play catch up pretty seriously.

- Now, I was going to say, I believe it was in "The Daily News," "The New York Daily News," but those of us who lived on Long Island, if it wasn't "Newsday," it really wasn't a newspaper.

- Yeah.

You got "Newsday" 'cause that had the, that's the one that had "Bloom County."

You had to read the "Bloom County" one, yeah.

It was, but not for that long.

And, yeah, I mean, again, I knew of the strip, but it, there was a steep learning curve, and it was enjoyable.

And I took two or three years of getting it all wrong, and hopefully I found my footing after that.

- You have basically, in my estimation, created some really fun characters.

I mean, Sally, of course, is the title character, and she sort of plays the straight man to her husband Ted, who under your, I guess, tutelage has become sort of this madcap screwball character who's prone to fits of fantasy, the occasional freakout while picking out a Christmas tree.

So what is it about Ted that spoke to you?

- Ted is essentially my inner child if I wore him as an exoskeleton, that there was no barrier whatsoever.

Sally is a character that happens in a lot of television shows, which they often call the traffic cop character, who has to make sure everything's running smoothly and such.

And I've tried to make her a little quirkier, 'cause I don't want her to be just the straight man for the entire strip.

That's not fair to the character.

When I originally got the strip, I wasn't quite sure who Ted was.

Ted was a husband, and that happens in a lot strips and there's nothing wrong with that.

So I had to find my way towards Ted, and unfortunately my way towards Ted was me, and I was writing him a little while, and the syndicate called, and the editor at the time said, "You're making Ted a little crazy."

And I said, "Well, I'm just writing him like me."

And there was a pause and he said, "I know."

[Terence laughs] They let me continue doing that.

I was monitored for about the first three years.

I would submit every script in, because, and I understood that, they had to keep a strip that they had been running for several years on track.

And then at a certain point they said, "Okay, we think you're ready to go," and that's when I started making changes.

So that's when basically I decided, okay, I'm gonna find my way towards Ted by writing what I enjoy doing.

And I'm going to find Sally by exploring more of her family.

That's when I created her mom, I created her sister, and I put all those characters.

I gave Hilary friends.

Hilary always had nondescript friends.

And the idea was just to fill out the world a little more so everyone had people to bounce off of.

And Ted, I wanted Ted to be competent, but I didn't want Ted to be a TV sitcom character who liked bowling, who liked golf.

There's nothing wrong with those two things.

They're not things I do.

Who drank beer and cheered on a football team, and I had no idea of any of that.

So I followed what I did, and that became Ted.

For better or for worse, you're reading me.

- With Ted, you have this character who loves, I guess, would be now mainstream, but when we were growing up it was sort of that nerd culture.

He's into "Star Wars," he goes to Comic-Con, and with his daughter Hilary, he is the worst coach of, is it the softball team?

- Originally it was the softball team, and then I just eventually morphed it into a Little League baseball team, I think 'cause it was written in the '80s when mostly when you had girls teams, it was softball, but later on that changed.

That just slowly became Little League.

But he, yeah, he's not good at it, or was not good at it.

- But he's a great dad, because he does care a lot about Hilary.

And one of the things I was going to say is Hilary in recent years has had some real issues with stress, anxiety, and I'm imagining this is part of what has happened in the real world.

"Sally Forth" was one of the strips that had the pandemic as part of its storyline, so when you are looking at a teenage character like Hilary, and looking at real teenagers who have issues, whether it's due to social media, or whether it's due to the pandemic, you know, how do you kind of incorporate that into what is technically a humor strip?

- I still think there's humor in that.

I think you'll notice in the strip we occasionally have a lot of dialogue, and I am aware of that for a strip.

But I like humor that is dialogue or conversationally driven.

And I think even when there are darker tones, or more realistic tones, you can still find the humor, because I think that's how a lot of people talk.

When they're discussing things, there is that still chance to find the little joke to keep going.

Once the pandemic hit, Jim and I already had two other months drawn, and we spoke on the phone.

We said, "We've gotta erase all that.

"We have to do the pandemic.

"We can't live in a world where this isn't happening "in the strip."

I could not have written that strip that way.

It would've been too removed from what we were doing.

And it certainly, I will be honest, a lot of times what I write in "Sally Forth" helps me.

So Hilary's anxiety is based on my anxiety, and we wanted to explore things, 'cause I think sometimes in strips that isn't covered enough, that there are people, you go through bouts of depression, not just sadness but depression.

You go through periods of doubt, and you have to work through those periods of doubt, and you have to have people you can talk to and rely on.

And we have that with Nona.

Nona's parents try to make sure, do the approach of everything's gonna be fine.

Everything's gonna be okay.

And I understand the input behind that, but it's not a helpful thing.

And Nona is struggling because of that, because nothing's ever discussed.

Whereas Hilary, she does have supportive parents, and she needed to go through this.

When we do these storylines, we make sure they last a little while.

We can't have someone go through a depression, and then it gets wrapped up in three weeks.

Ted lost his job several years ago.

It took him a full year to find a job, because for someone to lose their job, and we show he gets a job two weeks later, I think would be insulting.

So we have to take care and we stretch it out, and although yeah, this is a malleable timeline, a lot of can happen.

And they age every 11 years, but we did jump them two years.

But yeah, it, to be quite honest, it helps me a lot.

But we do like having these characters.

We try to ground it as much as have it fanciful.

And I think because we grind, we ground the strip, we can be more fanciful.

And because the strip on the surface looks like such a normal strip, that also lets us Trojan horse the weirdness that we want to.

If this trip was just full on weirdness, it'd be floating around.

And like anything else with a comic strip, if you have the light, you have to have the shadow.

And we like to cast a shadow every often and look at it.

- I know a recent storyline is featuring one of Hilary's friends.

Her parents are clearly, you know, they're going to separate, they're going to be a divorce.

- [Francesco] Yeah.

- And it's, again, it's just an interesting way to kind of bring this in.

And I'm reminded of Lynn Johnston's "For Better or For Worse," where you had the humor, but you also had these heartbreaking storylines where, you know, Farley drowned.

Doesn't drown, he has a heart attack after saving April.

Or you know, Michael's friend is, you know, the victim of abuse because he's gay.

So when you are, you know, kind of taking this knowledge of comics that you have, are you drawing inspiration from, you know, Snoopy and Charlie Brown, and you know, all those other great comic strips we grew up with?

- Oh, definitely.

I mean, Charlie Brown is, I loved "Peanuts," because "Peanuts" allowed me to look at a character who had anxiety.

And that was important for me.

I mean, I was in many ways Charlie Brown, only with a more varied wardrobe and without, you know, pre-pubescent alopecia.

That came later.

But, yeah, no, I mean, and it was important.

One of the strips I loved as a kid was "Doonesbury."

I got none of the political references, but I loved "Doonesbury" for a couple reasons.

Whatever happened in the strip, happens in the strip.

It stayed in the strip.

Characters recalled what happened in the strip.

And you know, when we were growing up and you watched television, whatever happened in that episode existed only in that episode, and then it was gone by the next episode.

Everything regenerated the world, and here was a thing where I remember as a kid going, "They remember what happened.

"They know what happened.

"They recall what happened," and these characters are growing and they're talking about things, and the other part of "Doonesbury" was "Doonesbury," the third panel was the joke, the fourth panel was the reaction.

I remember that I'm catching that early on, and I tried to have the reaction in the third panel, because then it, and again, strips have different approaches, different humors, so this is, I'm not saying this is a template of what it should be, but this is what I like.

I like the reaction, because then a comic strip doesn't end on a rim shot.

I try to, unless it's for emphasis, I don't have a strip end with no one speaks in exclamation points to kind of sell it.

When someone says a line, no one laughs at it.

But there's strips who do that, and that's perfectly fine, but it's the rhythm that I like.

And so "Doonesbury," I found that.

I found out how to write characters that keep going, or at least I was inspired.

I'm not saying I'm on the same level by any stretch of the imagination.

And Charlie Brown, I found out that you can discuss darkness.

There was a Charlie Brown strip where Lucy has slides of all his faults and does this whole projection of it.

And I thought it was the greatest thing.

I thought it was funny, but I thought, "This is amazing.

"You can do that."

And, you know, when you're 10 and you're worried that you're not blowing up a balloon correctly, you're that level of anxious.

You're like, "This is soothing.

"This is helpful."

I'm coming across great in this interview.

This is good.

[Francesco laughs] Very stable.

It's all good.

- Well, it's fascinating, because, you know, I remember reading "Doonesbury," and I, again, didn't get the politics, but yeah, when, you know, when B.D.

and Boopsie are are at home, that storyline continues.

When Zonker comes in, he is gonna be the nanny.

He's the nanny forever, even after the daughter grows up.

And again, it was rare, because, you know, as much as I love, you know, "Blondie," Dagwood gets fired on Monday.

Tuesday, he's back at the office and Mr. Dithers is not saying, "Look, you're on your last 108th strike."

[Francesco laughs] - That was, it's like that "Seinfeld" episode when George quits and tries to go back in the next day and pretends he never quit.

It was, it's just continuous.

And again, not knocking that, but you're right.

The, but here's "Doonesbury."

"Doonesbury" would break the wall every, would break the fourth wall or something.

Zonker would talk to the plants, and the plants would talk back.

And it worked, because there were a lot of other elements that felt very real.

You weren't entering just, you know, one of the segments from "Heavy Metal."

You're not going through some weird, that would be a strip, by the way, but you're not going through all fanciful.

You understood who they were.

And like in "Sally Forth," we have the characters, Hilary and her friends can read each other's minds, essentially.

They can hear it.

And that's based on the fact that if you're friends with someone long enough, you know what they're thinking.

So this was just the extension of that.

It isn't that they all have ESP, and suddenly the Great Gazoo's gonna appear, and we're gonna do all that.

It's just that there's a basis for that.

If you're around people long enough, you have a sense of what they're thinking, so we just took that an extra step.

So that's the approach we try.

We try to make fanciful, but it's based on where the characters are and what their situation is.

- I know that you are also the writer of "Judge Parker," which is a completely different style strip entirely.

So, - Yeah.

and I know on that there's been a very long storyline about a drug dealer in town.

So how do you sort of switch gears between the, I guess, the dramedy of "Sally Forth" and the more action, adventure crime of "Judge Parker?"

- Sometimes I strip those gears, which can happen.

"Judge Parker" took me a little while.

There are people who tell me it's not there yet, and that's perfectly fine.

"Judge Parker," "Judge Parker," I try to add humor a little bit, only because that's how people talk.

They will have a joke every so often.

"Judge Parker" is not for the punchline, but people do tend to talk that way, or at least people I hang out with.

And that's difficult.

It's what you wanna do with the "Judge Parker" story, especially the one that's going on now.

There's a moment when you realize, "Okay, we gotta wrap it up," and because you've got two panels a day, it takes longer than you ever think.

You can go, "Okay, we're gonna wrap this up."

It's like, all right, that was seven months, and there's a joke on a TV show, you're gonna get a "Golden Girls" reference right now, where someone said, you know, "What are you reading?"

"Apartment 3-G." They, "Oh, I haven't read that in like 30 years."

"Well, let me catch you up.

"It's later that same day," so you have to take that approach if it takes a while.

The current "Judge Parker" storyline, and I'm not gonna draw the direct parallel, is based on something.

It's based on something that has happened, or depending on how far you listen, how much you listen to news, it's kind of still happening.

And that helped gear that storyline.

And with "Judge Parker," I try to see occasionally what I can do that's a little dark, not purposely dark, but it is a strip about crime.

And to the degree that you can, I think there was a recent strip where the, I think.

I write the strip.

The daughter beats up someone, the one who was holding her hostage, and it's all in grawlix, but there's a lot of cursing in that one scene.

And it made sense for that one scene.

So try to do, I try to do what can seem real, but in the element of a story, and not- My whole thing is that these are people who go through things.

I mean, initially when I took it, I was like, okay, I'm gonna turn this into "Dallas" or "Dynasty."

all these references are old, but then it's like, no, this is better when I can pick up things from "Sally Forth," that this is grounded in these relationships.

These relationships change, the main characters are going through a separation, and I'm not having them automatically get back together, because I can't.

That's not how it works.

And so I'm hoping these are answers and not just monologues.

- No, these are great answers, because you know, I spoke once to Hilary Price who does "Rhymes with Orange."

- [Francesco] "Rhymes with Orange."

Yes, I've spoken to her.

she's very nice.

I like her.

- She's fantastic.

The strip is fantastic, but she said, you know, on average she has a reader for about three seconds.

They'll look at the page, they'll look at the picture, they'll read the caption, they'll see the little side panel, they'll move on.

Whereas with a, I guess, a soap strip or you know, something like "Sally Forth," there's a lot more dialogue, and you're going to have to invest a little bit more in that.

And it seems like you are expecting the audience to stay invested in this.

It's not, you know, Sunday all the action happens, and then Monday through Saturday, it's just a recap until that next Sunday strip.

- Right.

I mean, maybe that is a miscalculation on my part, but I do, I will be honest.

How I write the strips are how I read strips, those are the strips I like.

I like dialogue strips.

I like the humor based on character rather than situation.

There's a situation, the characters react, depending on what that character would do.

And I've been writing "Sally Forth" long enough that once I know where the situation is, you get to that point that you always, you know, that you hope that you don't tell 'em what to do.

You write down what they're telling you.

And my characters are chatty, but yeah, no, there's a very good chance that there are some people go, "No."

And I've heard people go, "That's too much dialogue," and I completely understand that.

But, and I will be honest, there have been panels where Jim has sent me, it's like, "You've gotta cut this down."

And he did one where it was the panel, and then there were just little eyes at the bottom.

It's like, "Oh crap, okay.

"We're gonna have to cut that."

And I'm, and I do know that, but I think I try to get a few jokes into a "Sally Forth" strip rather than a punchline joke.

And that's what happens.

And I try to get what I can say the characters are talking, so I may be asking a lot, and I'm not saying I have every reason to.

It is what I'm writing, and I completely understand if people go, "That's a lot."

In today, I think, today's "Sally Forth" even says, "Your parents are always talking," and Hilary goes, "Yeah, we've been told they talk a lot."

I, for better or for worse, I write the strip that I want to read.

I love a lot of different strips, but this is the strip I like.

I'm the only one reading the strip is what I'm saying.

[Francesco laughs] - No, I wouldn't go that far.

I mean, this is, I'm one of those people who subscribes to Comics Kingdom, and I will, you know, "Sally Forth" is one of my favorited strips and I go through there every morning, because what else do I have to do?

- Same here!

- So my question to you is, and it seems that with the media landscape changing, the decline of newspapers, the decline of the comics page.

Growing up on Long Island in the '80s, we had three pages of comics - Oh, that was beautiful.

That you could read through.

And on each page there were maybe 15, 20 strips.

So you had a lot to read through.

You had the soaps, you had the gag a day, you had those combination of the two, and of course "Family Circus."

So you know, when you are, you know, looking at the change in this media landscape, are you kind of saying, "You know what?

"It makes sense for me to be a little bit more verbose, "because the person who's still reading the newspaper "is choosing to read the newspaper."

It's not that everybody reads the newspaper.

They can get their news anywhere.

So is that sort of a thought in your mind that maybe there's that more sophisticated audience out there that chooses to read comics, because they choose to read the paper?

- It will be now.

You just gave me my argument for any other, for any interview that follows from this.

Possibly.

I think people will take, I think people gravitate towards graphic novels, towards comic strips, and will spend a little more time with it than they would.

I think it's important that the strips are no longer treated like the average age is either eight or 82.

And I think that was also part of the, let's get this pace quick.

Nothing against 82.

My mom is 87.

But, you know, you want a faster, easy to consume thing, so I think that is definitely part of it.

I think people are willing to invest more time in it, I'm certainly hoping.

When I was 10, nine or 10, these are long answers.

See?

This is where, this is why the strip ends up as it does.

When I was nine or 10, we had "The Killer Bees," and so I wrote essentially a bucket list without knowing what the bucket list was, because you never know.

We get in the news, it's like, it's gonna reach you in three weeks.

"The Killer Bees" are gonna reach you in three weeks.

So I figured everything I wanted to do, and it was write a comic strip, write humor books, write a TV show, and become a Jedi.

I got three of those.

No one wants to see a 55 year old Padawan, you know, but I'm sorry.

- I said, how long have you been a Jedi?

- Yeah, no, it's sad.

It's the Order 66, I just hid.

They never found me.

It's basically, I do believe people pay more attention to it.

I do believe people seek out these things, and I feel very fortunate that it's still there, that we still have the strip, we still have an audience, whether or not they're hate readers or not, but they're looking.

But we do serious stories.

When Ted's father passed away, we got a lot of mail, and a lot of it was very positive, a lot.

Some of it was, "I read comic strips to remove myself.

"I don't want to think seriously.

"I don't want to see this."

I get that.

It wasn't what we were going to do, but I get that.

People come in with different things, and some people come in, we're fortunate looking for what we're doing.

And as I said, I keep saying we, because this strip is Jim and I. I'm talking about, I know we're discussing the writing, but I can do the stuff, I can ask the stuff for the strip, because Jim is so good at what he does.

I mean he's just, he's remarkable.

And it gets to the point that I think I ask too much of him.

It's like, "What if we had these robot simians "that kind of-" "No, you know, I wanna see my family.

"Ches, stop."

- Well it's, I actually was going to ask you about that collaboration with Jim Keefe.

He's of course the artist on "Sally Forth," and he's been a guest on "Comic Culture."

So, you know, in the five minutes or so that we have left, how do you sort of, you know, could you kind of explain how you and Jim work on the strip, and how you kind of collaborate?

- It's gonna sound odd.

Jim and I have never met.

We've spoke on the phone a couple times.

We email.

It's I write the scripts and I write scene descriptions, and then there are storylines, like that summer storyline or various things we work on together as what's a good idea?

We go back and forth, but I will write scene descriptions, and then whatever, once it leaves me, it's Jim.

I don't check in on Jim and how he's doing the art.

I don't do anything like that.

We don't monitor each other.

And I think that's a level of trust.

And so we don't say, "You know, you shouldn't do that," or "I wouldn't do this," or "Let me see the art.

"Let me see what the art's doing.

"Let me go there."

We don't do that to each other, and I think that's helpful.

I think we found that for most things we're on the same wavelength, which helps.

So we're never talking at cross purposes.

And again, there's a remarkable level of trust I have in Jim that lets me write what I want to write.

And it's worked out very well.

- When you are working with an artist like Jim, somebody who's going to take your ideas and elevate them, you say you don't check up on the art.

Is the first time you're seeing the art is when it hits the newspaper?

Or are you, you know, getting a sneak peek and make a suggestion here or there?

- I don't get to see.

Every so often if we're trying something new, like when we had the park that was all the kaiju, or we did cosplay, or some scenes when Ted's dad passed away, he would send me things, because he wanted to make sure that he was capturing what we wanted to do.

And then usually it's like thumbs up.

But I will see it when I get the run that they send to the newspapers.

That's when I'll see it, and on the rare chance I'll look at it and say, "Okay, that's a little weird," depends on how important that is to make it.

But that's, I don't believe that's actually ever happened with "Sally Forth."

I think for the art it's been, Jim will sometimes change things that I ask, because it made more sense in the art.

And I'll see it's like, oh wait, that actually works a lot better.

And we had a 40th anniversary last year with "Sally Forth," and we do these things.

We don't really check in with anyone when we come up with these stories, to be quite honest.

And I said, "Can you draw Craig?"

And I said, "Can you draw Craig, excuse me, "Greg Howard's old drawing style?"

And he showed me what he could do, and it's like, "Okay, we're off to the races.

"We're gonna do this."

That's what it comes down to.

But it's, I'm very fortunate in many ways with this strip, and with "Judge Parker."

I don't mean to belittle "Judge Parker."

I'm just, I've just done Sally before Parker.

[Terence chuckles] - Well, we are getting close to the end of our conversation, and I did wanna say, you know, that 40th anniversary week was pretty awesome, especially with the callbacks to comic's history, the wedding scene that was reminiscent of Dagwood and Blondie's wedding, and and so on and so forth.

And I'm glad to meet someone else who has spent as much time researching comics as I have, so that you would know what Dagwood and Blondie's wedding looked like, even though it was in 1920 or so.

- Jim actually pulled that panel for me, so that was fantastic.

I found "The Furry Freak Brothers," 'cause my brother loved that strip.

And then "Dennis the Menace," so that gets the '50s.

They're gonna either have pills or alcohol.

This is, it's funny, like when you ever read old "Family Circus," it's like that family, the parents are drinking a lot, they're overwhelmed by the kids.

So you just catch that, but.

- Well, Francesco, they're telling me that we are out of time.

I wanted to thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

- Thank you so much.

Thank you.

- And before we wrap up, I do want to say it is the last show for our engineer, Chuck Lowery, who is retiring today.

So from the bottom of my heart, and from everyone here at "Comic Culture," Chuck, we wish you the best in your retirement.

And thanks to everyone at home for watching "Comic Culture."

We will see you again soon.

[heroic music] ♪ [heroic music continues] ♪ [heroic music continues] ♪ - What does it mean to be a Brave?

- And what makes us unique?

- Community.

- Affordability.

- And most importantly- - Tradition.

- Only at UNC Pembroke can you find what makes you special.

- Over the next few years here- - You'll define who you are.

- [Student] What you love, and who you want to become.

- We're ready to help you- - Discover your passions.

- [Student] From studying, to leading, to serving- - To stand out in a crowd.

This is where it all comes together.

- On stage, on the field, or in the choir.

- This experience will push your boundaries- - On a safe, inclusive campus.

- You will challenge yourself beyond what you thought possible.

- And it's all more affordable than you might think.

With the NC Promise Tuition Plan, you can break your own barriers, not the bank.

- We are mission focused, service minded, and grounded in our unique heritage.

- It's just who we are and it's what we do.

- And that is what it means to be a Brave.

[driving music] - [Announcer] "Comic Culture" is a production of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.