Friday Foster

• Title — Friday Foster • Author — Jim Lawrence • Current — Jorge Longarón • Status — Concluded daily & Sunday strip • First — 1970 01 18 • Last — 1974 02 17 • Syndicate — Chicago Tribune Syndicate • Publisher — Dell Comics • Genre — Soap opera

Jim Lawrence had been the writer of the London Daily Express comic strip, James Bond, when he became interested in creating a comic about a black character. Spanish cartoonist Jorge Longarón was chosen as the illustrator, and the strip was syndicated by the Chicago Tribune Syndicate. The comic focused on the glamorous life of its title character, a former fashion model who became an assistant to a top fashion photographer, as described by comics historian Dave Karlen: A 1970 issue of Jet reported on the debut of Friday Foster. The magazine stated that writer Lawrence lived in Summit, New Jersey and illustrator Longarón lived in Spain. Lawrence, a veteran of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War had specifically sought a Spanish illustrator for the strip, at least in part because at the time Spanish illustrators were much cheaper than comparably skilled American illustrators. The two communicated via postal mail and telephone calls. Because of the slow speed of the mail, Longarón mailed his drawings three weeks before they were scheduled to appear. Still, the drawings sometimes did not arrive on time, and artist Frank Springer did a small amount of uncredited work on the strip, recalling in the mid-2000s, "I knew the writer, who lived here in New Jersey,... [and] I got a call a couple of times from Lawrence who said they hadn't gotten the material through from Spain" and asked Springer to fill in. "I guess over the years I did two Sunday pages, maybe three." Longarón, from Barcelona, had never been in New York until he made a brief trip there to sign the contract to do the comic. Even then, he never actually set foot in Harlem, though he did pass through it taking photos from a taxi for future reference. He drew the comic using a technique he had already established, with a sharpened pencil dipped in ink. He worked in part from photographs. He based Friday's general appearance on a particular African American model from Playboy, but also used his own mother and aunt (both artists themselves) as models. Dell Comics published a single issue of a Friday Foster comic book (October 1972), written by Joe Gill and illustrated by Jack Sparling. In 1975, Friday Foster was adapted into a blaxploitation feature film of the same name, starring Pam Grier. In September 2019, the Friday Foster character appeared in a Dick Tracy story drawn by Andrew Pepoy. The comic was the subject of a temporary exhibit "Longaron i Friday Foster. L'heroïna inesperada" which ran from 20 March 2024 through 24 June 2024 at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona.