Stone Soup is an American newspaper comic strip. It was created by cartoonist Jan Eliot as Sister City, and was renamed after being syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate in 1995. The strip originally ran daily until 2015, when it switched to Sunday strips only before ending in 2020. The strip centers on a single mother named Valerie Stone, and her struggles to raise her daughters Alix and Holly.
Publication history
The comic strip was created by Jan Eliot. It began as a weekly in 1990, and ran for five years in the Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard under the name Sister City before being syndicated. The syndicated daily strip debuted in November 1995.
Stone Soup featured as a daily strip for 20 years until October 2015, when Eliot decided she no longer wanted to draw a daily comic, to devote more time to travel, socialize and focus on other creative projects. She continued to create a Sunday cartoon strip.
The Stone family features a family headed by single mother Val, an uncommon contrast with the ordinary nuclear family depicted in more traditional strips. As the author explained,
When I write I am writing first and foremost for single and working parents. I often felt very isolated and "put down" because of my circumstances (I was a single working mom for 10 years). I even had a teacher tell me that their school "was a better place before all the single moms arrived". My daughters both turned out fabulously, thank you, and I think I was a good parent.
It is common for strip storylines to consist of household arguments that are not resolved. Unlike many strips, the characters do age, but at a very slow rate. Val has celebrated her 38th and 39th birthdays in the strip; Alix and Holly were 9 and 12 when the strip began, and are now 10 and 13.
On 15 June 2020, Jan Eliot announced her retirement and that Stone Soup will end on 26 July 2020.
Symbology
The strip was named for the folk tale about Stone Soup, with the focus that good things can be created with small contributions from many sources.