Military spouse draws from experience for comic strip Published July 31, 2009 By Sue Sapp 78th Air Base Wing Public Affairs ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. -- Being raised in a military family and married to an Air Force major has given Julie Negron lots of experiences to draw from. The military spouse created and produces "Jenny," a comic strip about life as a military spouse. The strip shows the challenges and joys of being an Air Force wife. Mrs. Negron is married to Maj. Angel Negron, a pilot with the 330th Combat Training Squadron. She was already writing a spouse humor column and drawing editorial cartoons when she came up with the idea for the strip while the family was stationed at Kadena Air Base, Japan. "When your husband is deployed, even if you have kids, there's nobody at home to have an intelligent conversation with so you try to throw yourself into your most creative outlet," she said. The strip runs in Stars & Stripes and about 60 other military publications. It has even shown up in the television program "Army Wives," stuck on a refrigerator and in the show's mock base newspaper. "They didn't call me and I don't get paid for it because it's just a prop, but I was excited about it," she said. Military wives from all branches seem to respond and identify with her character Jenny, as evidenced in the large number of letters and emails she receives. "It's a different kind of life. I've never lived anywhere for more than four years so I know what they're going through," she said. Major Negron thinks his wife's creative outlet is great. "It allows us to express our lives in a humorous way and about 90 percent of what is in the strip has happened to us," he said. Representatives from the Pentagon Channel recently visited Mrs. Negron at Robins to tape a segment for the program "Recon." Jim Schaefer, special programs producer, said they were looking at current cartoons generated from within the military and will contrast them to older ones from around the World War II era. "We want to show how things are similar and how things have changed and sometimes how they are poking fun at the military," he said. The show will air Sept. 7 on the Pentagon Channel.