“Doctor Appleby” has been in quite a few strips lately, particularly dealing with the existence of Santa (Jump Start in the “Boston Globe”)**. I don’t remember him ever being white, though. Perhaps you were thinking of JoJo’s assistant, “Benny”? I’ll check the comic collections I have at home.
** The strips have only a 14-day archive. The United Media archive is only 30 days. Sorry.
any luck on finding out about “Doctor applebee”? My fiance remembers him as white, also.
Whatever happened to Cousin Lyman in “Garfield,” who was Odie’s original owner?
What happened to Annie, Steve, Chris, Richard, and Leah in
“For Better or for Worse?”
Well, Robotman originally (as far back as I go with the strip, anyway), was living with the Milde family; Gary and Kevin and their family, if I’m not mistaken. He began hanging around mostly with Gary, and then started hanging around with some kid (not Kevin, I think) and his sister- I don’t remember where they came from. But that didn’t last long- Meddick scrapped the whole scenario and brought in Monty Montahue, who I suspect is a sort of caricature of Meddick himself. Gary Milde, I think, was a sort of preliminary sketch of Monty.
Meddick has provided at least four “Origins” of Robotman at various times in the strip.
He seems to have settled down, and the strip revolves around Monty, his cat Fleshy, and housemate Moondog McHorny (I think that’s the name), an old pal of Monty’s. We last glimpsed Robotman making a failed escape attempt, several months ago- you see, aliens had impregnated Fleshy (though male) and kidnapped Fleshy’s son to trade in order to get Robotman for their zoo. (See, it all makes sense when it’s explained.) Mr. Pi, now staying with Monty, was a half-human who was a somewhat unwilling agent in the trade.