Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott for July 23, 1991

Interesting fact: when Rick and Jerry were submitting Baby Blues to various syndicates, one of the syndicates they sent the strip to suggested adding an older sibling to the strip along with baby Zoe. So they complied and temporarily added an older sibling to the unfinished version of the strip, whom slightly resembled Zoe when she got older.

The syndicate later rejected this version of the strip, however there exists a version of this specific strip with the older sibling standing in the doorway where the blanket is. It’s kinda creepy, especially since in that version of the strip, she’s HOLDING said blanket, meaning they left it there in this version as a pseudo reference to her.

Honestly, I’m glad the version with the older sibling got rejected, because I think it defeated the whole purpose of what Rick and Jerry were going for—when Baby Blues started out, it was about a couple who had just become new parents and were learning the ups and downs and responsibilities of being one. If there was an older sibling to start with, that kind of defeats the basic idea of what Baby Blues is—which is ordinary people learning to be parents for the first time and the journey the family goes through as the kids get older. In the rejected version, clearly Wanda and Darryl would’ve already been experienced with Zoe’s older sibling before Zoe herself was born and it presumably would’ve started in the middle of said journey the family goes through—and I feel like it probably wouldn’t have been quite as interesting and would’ve felt more thematically flimsy.