Believe it or don't, Sid was based on Jan Suter. Most people reading this never heard of Jan. He was one of the more inspiring people I had the pleasure to get to know when I moved to Toledo and came out. Jan was a sanguine free spirit, whose personality I have totally failed to capture. Sid was inspired by him, but Sid became his own person. Sid and Jan both viewed the gay experience as being a series of virginities to be lost.
I regret very much to say that Jan didn't foresee where that much unprotected sex would lead. He was the first person I knew who died of AIDS. To remember Jan, see http://www.utoledo.edu/library/canaday/HTML_findingaids/MSS-059.html.
But Murphy's Manor is fiction, and in my made-up world, Sid never gets sick.
Sid looked nothing like Jan. I meant for Sid to retain Jan's culture, intellect, and love of upsetting the apple cart -- all in a fantasy body Jan would've enjoyed. For comparison, I show the real Jan as I drew him in a cameo in strip #334. Sid ties the indoor world record, originally held by Albert the Alligator, for a cartoon character to morph in appearance from his first strip to a more mature form. Except Sid didn't morph so much as Murf.
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