Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been running a little primer on the characters from MEMO (the comic strip). One character, I’ve put off til the end was M.A.R.T.H.A. (MARTHA). I created MARTHA during the early days of Covid (you can click here to read an essay on how MEMO saved my mental health in those times )
But who (or what) is MARTHA?
I had been drawing MEMO (the comic strip) on and off since 2016 and had always wanted it to be a daily strip, but by that point was more ‘off’ than ‘on’ given the demands of a 40- 60 hour a week job. But, by working from home, suddenly I had a couple hours back in my day, so I challenged myself to see for how long I could keep up a daily strip.
It didn’t matter what I did, as long as I did *something*. So, rather than a typical four panel - set up /set up /set up /joke format, I, well, I just did whatever came to mind that day. In these early strips, I was simply cheering that it was Monday or Thursday or whatever - I wasn’t losing track of the days, but I knew my friends were. Here’s an early Monday - Friday series I did with our marquee star, Angie:
It was also a good way to use a lot of characters that I hadn’t drawn in a long time or try some out that I hadn’t yet found a place for. One of the latter examples was a new character, MARTHA.
I’d wanted to draw a robot for awhile and came up with MARTHA. I wondered how a robot would get drunk, or sick or what it would be like for them to lay on the beach, and so forth. I liked how MARTHA is a little bit Jetsons and a little bit like a refrigerator with heating ducts for arms and legs. I instantly liked them found little silly things to do.
I envisioned that MARTHA had escaped a lab and was making their way around the country experiencing life for the first time: MARTHA at an art gallery or MARTHA at a seaside resort. Along the way, I introduced their creator, a scientist named Mr. Johnson, a non-descript man who didn’t have much of a life outside the lab. Naturally, Mr. Johnson needed to return MARTHA to his lab.
In the serial, THE PARTY, MARTHA shows up in New York City near The Tangled Winkie in MEMO 200:
And, after the party’s over, everyone returns to their home, but somehow, MARTHA has snuck into Nanny’s home!
And there all of our characters have been, frozen in time, in what I think was a pretty good cliffhanger, all in all. :) In the world of the strip itself, I’ll include a brief recap but you have a bit of a leg up knowing some of this backstory! ;)
(As a side note, the other side of the MEMO-verse is my super hero character, The Lone Apple, and he would take center stage in the serial THE LEGION OF BUGS. In the MEMO-verse, Angie’s job is as cartoonist to The Lone Apple, who exists in another dimension, but we’ll get to that eventually).
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