Although Joanie initially sees Andy as a potential romantic partner, the two become best friends, and she supports him as he navigates the difficulties of gay culture in the 1980s, including his eventual contraction of HIV and subsequent death from the disease.
In 1982, the character reappears as an organizer for the Bay Area Gay Alliance, and contributes to the congressional re-election of Lacey Davenport.
This storyline led to more notability for Garry Trudeau,[5] but three newspapers of the 900 carrying the strip refused to publish it as being in bad taste.
The panel (created by G. Scott Austen, Marceo Miranda and Juan-Carlos Castano) reads: "In Loving Memory: Andy Lippincott 1945–1990.
The panel hangs in The NAMES Project Foundation's offices in Atlanta and was not actually sewn into a block of The AIDS Memorial Quilt.