Written by by Jim Lawrence
Art by Jorge Longaron, Gray Morrow
Published by Ablaze
In the future, when rare, cult-favorite comic strips are collected, as they should be, I hope the various editors and publishers use the new Ablaze collection of Friday Foster as a template.
I, personally, spent this past summer with the delightful Ms. Foster, tracking down and reading the entire daily and Sunday run of her strip online in not-so-glorious and often poorly-scanned black and white, all for an article coming up in TwoMorrows’ Back Issue magazine sometime in 2022.
I had hoped this long-announced book would have been out before I wrote my piece in order to help my research but it was delayed several times. So, while you’ll have to wait ‘til next year to see what I, myself, had to say about Friday and her adventures, I highly recommend you introduce yourself to her now via this volume.
And who is this Friday Foster?
She’s an African-American photographer turned fashion model who, along with her white photographer boss, Shawn North, often gets involved in various colorful, unlikely, and not always legal situations. Although considered a pioneering strip because of its black heroine, that aspect of the run isn’t as prominent as one might think. Friday herself often takes a back seat to burly blond Shawn (who somewhat resembles the UK newspaper hero, Garth). The two of them go up against terrorists, kidnappers, a voodoo cult, jewel thieves, a black Tarzan, a man-monster, and—on a more mundane but no less interesting level—a rare bird, a plus size model, feminists, several amorous black millionaires, a supposedly dead rock star, and, in the end, the deadliest threat of them all, inter-office politics.
Veteran adventure comic strip writer Jim Lawrence makes all of this very readable, with a lot of likable and well-defined characters coming and going from the strip along the way. The real attraction to Friday Foster, however, is and always has been its art, by Jordi Longaron. Although spelled a day here and a day there by various fill-in illustrators both from Spain and America and replaced by others toward the end (including Gray Morrow), 90% of the run is by Longaron and Friday is Longaron’s masterpiece.
After years of comics and strips both in his native Spain and for the UK, the artist offers a clear understanding of pacing and panel design, of when to be realistic and when to be exaggeratedly so. Key to the strip’s artistic triumphs is the fact that Longaron generally takes great advantage of the fashion world setting to give us some colorful and impressive outfits, backgrounds, and characters.
All of this is highlighted greatly here by the restored and “remastered” Sunday strips throughout, with the process for same being detailed in one of the several behind the scenes sections herein. For those who don’t know, continuity strips were actually rather complicated to do properly as the Sunday strips, done well in advance, were supposed to be readable without necessarily seeing the daily strips, which were actually written and drawn later. In other words, one person subscribing to a host paper for all seven days of the week would get the whole story but the person who only took the Sunday—and there were many. MY house, for example—should be able to also get the whole story without ever seeing Monday through Saturday. The dailies should advance the story at a snail’s pace, with those advancements recapped in the first panels of the following Sunday for those who were only around that day. See what I mean? Complicated.
This volume has chosen to collect only the delectable Sunday run of Friday Foster. Adding four years of dailies, too, on top of the four years of Sundays, would have meant a lot more pages, a higher cost, and possibly no book. There are, therefore, a few minor continuity issues storywise but for the most part it all works.
What really works are all the extras.
Not only are there extensive pieces about the strip’s origin but also articles and interviews by, about, and with its late creators as well as talks with several of Lawrence’s family members, but also pieces on an unsold prototype version—which I didn’t even know about for my own article, the later Dark Angel series of violent, pulpy, paperbacks (now ridiculously overpriced on eBay!) with their visually Friday-esque heroine, written by Lawrence with covers by Longaron, extensive coverage and interviews connected to the fun 1975 Pam Grier Friday Foster movie, and more.
Overall, there are 22 text pieces here, both before and after the strips themselves, covering just about every possible angle on Friday Foster, the character, her creators, and her strip. Some are translated from the Spanish where I believe they appeared in the equally impressive Norma Editorial Friday Foster reprint collection as put together by Javier Mesón and David Moreau, and to which Christopher Marlon, the man behind this book, is deeply indebted.
The only text piece I had an issue with was the one on the one-off Dell Friday Foster comic book, which spoke more of just its existence and scarcity than its story and how it related to the official newspaper version. Other than that, in fact, the closest thing I had to an issue with the book at all was some minor repetitiousness in some of the behind the scenes reprinted material.
So, yeah, when strips like Robin Malone and Long Sam and maybe Dateline: Danger are finally collected someday, they should be collected with all the obsessive detail shown Friday Foster in this great volume from Ablaze.
Friday is coming. You’ll appreciate it when it gets here.
Booksteve recommends.
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