The turkey leftovers are gone at last, and the relatives are finally out the door. Christmas shopping is in full swing, and the Post-Gazette has an early gift for its readers: "Baby Blues" joins the family in the comics pages.

	Click illustration for larger image.

The strip about the trials and tribulations of parenting takes up permanent residence in the print edition of the Post-Gazette today, replacing "The Boondocks," which creator Aaron McGruder stopped drawing earlier this year.

In the Post-Gazette's recent comics survey, "Baby Blues" scored the most "love it" votes of the seven strips the paper has sampled since "The Boondocks" went on hiatus in May. It kicks off today with a holiday-themed story line and will appear Mondays through Saturdays.

Longtime friends Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott created "Baby Blues" in 1990. The then-childless Scott found father-of-two Kirkman's ordeals with temper tantrums, dirty diapers and teething pain humorous fodder and wrote about it, and Kirkman added his artwork.

"Baby Blues" focuses on the McPherson family, headed by Wanda and Darryl, a couple in their mid-30s raising three children. Nothing is off-limits, as the McPhersons try to juggle children, life outside the home and their sanity.

The addition of "Baby Blues" is only the first of several changes in store for the PG comics pages, fueled in part by your participation in our recent survey. Results can still be seen online in the article "Counting up the votes help 'FoxTrot' dance to victory in our comics survey".

So stay tuned. And turn to Page C-4 in the print edition for the launch of a "Blues" Christmas.

-- Karen Carlin,
Post-Gazette staff writer