Baby Blues
Baby Blues is a comic strip series produced by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott since 7 January, 1990.
Introduction
The strip is mainly about bring up babies and children. Children in the strip often show ignorance on parents (but also fear to their punishments), and parents often meet a dilenma, being exhausted and frustrated of the children's incooperation, as well as ultimate love towards them.
There was a Baby Blues animated series aired in 2000. Originally 2 seasons were produced but only 1 was ever on.
Characters
The strip mainly consist of three families. The main family is a White family called MacPhersons, but the family name of the neighbouring two (one Black and the other White) are unavailable (or undiscovered by the article writer) by the time of writing.
From the article's writer: I know it's not a good thing to distinguish the two supporting families by their race, but that's the only possible way I can come up with. Patrickov
Main Family (MacPhersons)
- Darryl: The father. A manager, noticable with the extremely big nose. Sometimes unaware of his wife's exhausted state but he would have to face it if he did so.
- Wanda: The mother. Originally have a job, she was forced to stay at home to look after her children. Easily frustrated (due to the job of being a mother), and jealous to any mothers that were doing better than her.
- Zoe: The big daughter (born 7 January, 1990 – her birth starts the strip). She is a very fussy girl and tends not to stop talking. Likes to tease or scare her brother, Hammie, but often lose due to her ill-temper.
- Hammish: The son, usually called Hammie (born 25 April, 1995). Has an extreme enthusiasm on trucks, and can tell their model on sight. Likes to tell his mom when his big sister teases or bullies him, but generally he copes with incidents better than Zoe.
- Wren: The little daughter (born 26 October, 2002). Still an infant at the time of writing. She didn't record so much nuisance compared with her elder sister and brother.
The White supporting family
This family joined the strip in late 1990.
- Bunny: The mother, and the main character of this family and is the target of any possible jealousy from Wanda, because Bunny outrages in many aspects (such as body, life-style, etc.) Nearly all main grown-up characters don't like her and sometimes tricked her.
- Butch: Bunny 's husband. Generally unaware of his wife's behaviour towards the neighbours.
- Bogart: The big son. He's the greatest victim under Zoe's teases and bullies (because he didn't cope with teases as well as Hammie), and she called him a "crybaby".
- John and Jon Wendell: Twin boys born 10 August, 2002. Easily confusing since their mother didn't actually name them differently.
The Black supporting family
- Yolanda: is the mother of this family and a long-time supporter of Wanda, usually quiet when Wanda quarrels with Bunny.
- Mike: Yolanda 's husband.
- Keesha: Big daughter, Zoe 's friend.
- Dziko: Little daughter, born about the same time as Wren.
Other supporting characters
- Rhonda: Wanda's younger sister. Enjoys the life being a single woman. She usually shows up as the babysitter when Wanda and Darryl go out and leave their children behind.
- Parents of Darryl and Wanda.
- Mr. Doyle: The kindergarten, teaches Hammie to do many weird things.
Time line
Unlike other strips like Peanuts and Garfield, where characters don't grow, children in Baby Blues do grow as time passes, but the strips' time is a bit slower than real time.
The authors claimed that the time ratio is 3 to 1 (i.e. 3 days in real time equals to 1 day in the strip, probably calculated under the theorem that 6 weekdays strips stands for one day and the Sunday strip stands for another)
As the strip goes on, it's found that the real ratio is about 2 to 1. As of 2004, the strip has been on for 14 years and the main character, Zoe MacPherson, is 7 years old.
