Catch Up On 'Little Dog Lost'
by Caleb GoellnerLast July, the titular (and tailed) protagonist of Steve Boreman's Little Dog Lost finally found his way home, concluding one beagle's decade-long journey through a rural area stocked with furry friends and foes with only one thing in common: they were all waiting for him to die.
But die he did not! Debuting on March 26 of 2007, LDL ran daily in newspapers and on GoComics, picking up more and more fans with every step of the dog's wandering paws. While it ended relatively recently, Boreman uploaded a new strip on January 29 to serve as a framing device for re-running some of his favorite strips in chronological order -- like a kind of "best of" collection. On its own, the strip stands as a reminiscing recap, while equally serving as a segue into the reruns.
We got in touch with Steve to learn more about what made this the right time to rerun LDL. As often is the case on GoComics, it had a lot to do with the fans.
"As the strip wound down, I started getting a lot of requests from readers to see it from the beginning," said Boreman, "I think the Little Dog audience grew towards the end of the run, so a lot of the stories will be new to the people who joined later along the dog's journey. I got a lot of really touching letters from people who felt very close to the characters and said they would miss them when the strip ended. Wow, you couldn't ask for a nicer compliment and I'm thrilled to be able to meet up with everyone again on GoComics."
For LDL fans, any new comic -- even a standalone strip meant to help contextualize reruns -- ignites hope for more. Boreman isn't ruling anything out, he just has more pressing matters to attend to at the moment.
"I don't have any concrete plans," wrote Boreman, "but in the movie that plays in my head, I drop a new one in every so often on special occasions, like a spooky Halloween story or the dog appreciating the changing seasons or the solstice and equinox (equinoxes?) I'm also hoping to annotate the strips here and there as they rerun with posts to the Little Dog Lost Facebook page. But we have a newborn at my house so I'm not allowed to make any promises."
When Little Dog Lost launched, Boreman had recently lost his own dog of 12 years. A little more than a decade later, though, he's got a pooch-filled home once again. Of course, hardcore fans may have already picked up on that.
"Some sharp-eyed readers noticed that another dog who appeared by the road at the end of the strip was drawn (poorly) to look like a puggle friend of mine named Vox. Truth be told, he looks more like a cartoon in person than anything I could put on paper," wrote Boreman.
Get caught up on Little Dog Lost from the very (new) beginning here.
