Baby Blues is a comic strip that’s been running since January 1990. It focuses on the MacPherson family, initially father Darryl, mother Wanda, and their newborn baby Zoe. The strip begins in a hospital room, immediately after Zoe’s birth. A younger brother, Hammie, was born in 1995 and a little sister, Wren, was added to the strip in 2002. One thing that sets the strip apart from others is that the characters age, albeit at a much slower rate than we do.

Maybe more interesting than the strip is the short-lived TV show that aired on the WB in 2000. The strip’s authors had limited creative control; WB made the show (moderately) more adult than the strip to try and compete with Fox’s animated sitcoms, and even considered changing the name to Bluesville for some reason. The show’s production was troubled, to put it lightly; the 13 first season episodes were animated by three different studios on different continents, and five of those episodes (including the pilot, a Christmas special initially meant to air in 1998) never aired until Adult Swim picked up the show’s reruns in 2002.

This is where we get to the most interesting thing about Baby Blues: there was an entire 13 episode second season of the animated series (almost) completed that’s never seen the light of day. According to one of the strip’s authors, Rick Kirkman:

“Season 2 (13 episodes) was ordered, produced and nearly complete. All that was left was to replace the temp music cues and sound effects and possibly some minor editing. All animation was done. Full episodes like that exist, but I haven’t seen them. But my partner has.

It is incorrect to say there was only pre-production work and not much more. It is correct that they will probably never see the light of day. A lot having to do with accounting practices, since the second season was written off as a loss, as far as I know.”

The show doesn’t appear to be streaming legally anywhere, so we’ll conclude with something I can embed – the music video to the show’s theme song, Barenaked Ladies’ “It’s All Been Done”.

Have fun posting!