That same strip ran for almost a year and a half without a single appearance by the title character.
Yup. We had Junior’s electoral campaign (complete with “Randy Parker’s a fegelah!” trash from his opponent and the immortal “I’ll deny YOU, missy!” from his opponent’s alky wife), Sam Driver’s wife Abby accompanying her adopted daughter Neddy to France and buying a house in Paris ($2 million!), a long, convoluted story about someone trying to cheat Sam and Abby out of their water rights (a plot foiled by 8-year-old other adopted daughter Sophie and the Internet), the aforementioned pot-growing old people next door, and the relatively short (for Judge Parker) storyline about the Iraq War vet double-amputee lawyer, his mother, the mysterious terrorist woman and the amazing kung-fu secretary.
And then the old Judge shows up to ask Sam (the featured, if not title, character at this point) to negotiate a good book contract for him…he’s writing a novel about a crime-fighting judge and his lawyer toady. He’s calling it Hardcastle & McCorm…, er…never mind…
Elf Life is a definite contender for most long-winded. I found it about 4 years ago and read every installment up to that present day-until I realized that Mr. Fire was just indulging himself, esp. with the “Soulmates who can’t be together thing” between Filis and Baughb.
That combined with the thirteen thousand storylines that Abrams insists that he’s going to wrap up before the end of the millennium was the reason why I stopped reading that strip. Pibgorn may be slow, but at least there’s only the one storyline.