Sally Forth (syndicated strip)

Sally Forth is a daily comic strip created by Greg Howard in 1982, focusing on the life of a white American middle-class mother at home and work. Sally's name is a play on words—"to sally forth" means to set out on an adventure.

In 1991 Craig MacIntosh began doing the drawing. In 1999, Howard quit writing as well and turned the strip over to Francesco Marciuliano. Marciuliano continues writing the series with Jim Keefe providing the art, published with King Features Syndicate distribution.

Sally and her family

 * Sally Forth (née Jansen) – Main character. Wryly comments on the eccentric behavior of those around her. A forty-year-old marketing department manager with a husband and daughter.
 * Ted Forth – Sally's hopelessly devoted husband, light-hearted with goofball tendencies. Born on Long Island, he is a perpetually forty-year-old white-collar professional working in strategic sourcing, but he was unemployed from May 2007 to May 2008. He only seems to think "outside the box," leading him into conflict with family and co-workers. Ted is obsessed with pop culture from his youth, often making references to Star Wars and other science fiction from the era. People find Ted to be a refreshing and realistic portrait of modern fatherhood. For a long while neither his ten-year-old daughter Hilary nor the reader knew Ted's profession. Ted's job, strategic sourcing, was finally mentioned in the strip published on March 8, 2008. He becomes highly competitive while coaching girls' softball. Due to the continuous losing by the team's poor performance is leading Ted onto signs of a mental breakdown. He despises his mother-in-law, who insults his masculinity, and his favorite food is meatloaf.
 * Hilary Forth – Sally and Ted's twelve-year-old daughter. She is currently in the seventh grade, along with her best friend, Faye. She is very interested in music and sports. From late June 2011 to late August 2011, she developed a relationship with Jon, who was visiting for the summer. They are still together but are trying to establish a long-distance relationship.
 * Kitty – The Forths' cat, usually only seen in Hilary's room.
 * Jackie Adams (née Jansen) – Sally's younger sister, prone to juvenile behavior and in general a flippant, impulsive contrast to Sally's responsible personality. She married Sally's former co-worker, Ralph, in summer 2012.
 * Bettina Adams - Jackie and Ralph's daughter, born and introduced in strips of September 23-29, 2013. Sally has since then become overly proud of her new niece, which is hinted to have sparked a want for another child. Something that Ted is dreading. It was revealed at Thanksgiving, that Jackie named her after hers and Sally's childhood pet cat.
 * Laura – Sally's mother, who is very critical and high opinionated of Sally, her family, and most other people. She shows great joy in tormenting and berating Ted. She's often shown drinking wine. Her infrequent appearances are dreaded by all. Her boyfriend, Gerald, appears senile, rendering him incapable of socializing.

Sally's workplace

 * Ralph Adams – Sally's former boss in human resources, Ralph is a caricature of incompetent and self-centered business leadership. Ralph was eventually fired and reduced to working at a fast food restaurant, but in 2006 returned to co-manage the department with Sally. In 2009, he became the sole manager of human resources while Sally became manager of marketing, which was staffed by several lazy, whiny employees who constantly challenged Sally. Sally suffers further anguish from Ralph in 2010 when he starts dating her sister Jackie. In April 2011, it was announced simultaneously that the marketing department would be closed, Ralph would become a consultant so he and Jackie could start a business, and Sally would return to HR as its sole director. Married Sally's sister in 2012; their engagement caused a rift between the sisters for a time as Sally didn't approve of the relationship. At age 63, he is about to become a father in 2013. Daughter Bettina (named for Jackie's cat) is born and introduced in strips of September 23-29, 2013.
 * Alice – An employee in HR, and Sally's main confidante at work, Alice is sardonic, self-serving and romantically frustrated.
 * Jeff – Sally's blandly competent current boss.

Other characters

 * Faye – Hilary's best friend as of the start of middle school. She comes from a less ideal family than the Forths, cultivates a somewhat rebellious image, and is often blunt to the point of rudeness with adults. She and Hilary started a band and later added Nona.
 * Nona – Hilary and Faye's classmate. She comes from a rich family and has a recording studio, indoor theater, and a guesthouse at her house. She also has a Wii system that can output high definition video, a function unavailable on the actual device. She writes songs and claims she can play every instrument. To their dismay, Nona becomes estranged from Hilary and Faye in 2012, and, in 2013, had made new friends. She eventually reunited with her friends during the summer, after revealing her new friends only used her.
 * Aria – Ted's co-worker, referred to by Alice as his "office wife" who seems to share Ted's enthusiasm for '70s and '80s pop culture, much to Sally's consternation.
 * Jon – A boy visiting the area for the summer of 2011. He is from out of town and met Hilary at an Independence Day picnic. After getting to know each other, Jon and Hilary became a couple. For the summer of 2012, he is back and spending more time with Hilary. During the summer of 2013, he returned to visit Hilary again; however, she started to worry that she was not spending time with her friends but she still wanted to spend time with him. Fortunately, Jon still cared for her, thus setting her worries aside.

Recurring themes

 * Sally has a quirky habit of eating the ears off of her daughter's chocolate Easter bunnies. Hilary annually schemes to hide her bunny but usually fails.
 * The Forth family has long dreamed of taking a vacation in Paris and has been on the verge of departing several times, only to have some unexpected tragedies or complications stop them.
 * Several strips in 2006 and 2007 alluded to the fact that no one really knew what Ted's job was, a metatextual reference to the often vague nature of comic characters' employment. After his layoff Hilary frets that they will never know the truth. On March 8, 2008, Ted mentions for the first time that his job was/is Strategic Sourcing.
 * Ted coached Hilary's all-girls softball team, which is so bad that it rarely, if ever, wins a game. The team is so futile, Ted insanely made a promise of a Walt Disney World trip if it won the league championship and expected not to have to follow through with the promise. Though personally enthusiastic, Ted seemed to have fatalistically accepted the team's losing streak and took to giving pre-game pep talks made up of equal parts exasperation and stream-of-consciousness rambling. One talk featured a quote from The Godfather. Because of this, Ted was discouraged from coaching the team during the 2008 version of the storyline. In 2011, however, the team did win the championship for their league.

Books
"Sally Forth", by Fawcett Columbine, 1987. ISBN 0-449-90260-9

"I Gave at the Office", by Andrews McMeel, 1994. ISBN 0-8362-1743-8