Comic strips Interviews

Scott Underwood, Locked Onto a Sly Fox

Scott Underwood has been living his childhood dream. He contributes the art and colour for the Sunday pages of Slylock Fox, a comic strip aimed at kids.

For the last four years, Underwood has been living his childhood dream. He contributes the art and colour for the Sunday pages of Slylock Fox, a long-running comic strip aimed at kids. The strip is filled with word puzzles, spot-the-difference challenges, nature facts, and how-to-draw lessons.

He began contributing to the strip four years ago after Bob Weber Jr., the Arizona-based son of the strip’s creator and today the main writer and artist, reached out after seeing some of Underwood’s fan art on Instagram.

“He liked my work and asked if I wanted to ink something. And from there I did a bunch of inking for him, and then I became what’s known in the comic strip world as a ‘ghost artist,’ which is very common in the industry, where I would draw some strips for Bob without credit. And then as I got more involved, he said, ‘You know what, let’s just put your name on it, because you’re contributing now.’”

Shawn Conner for The Vancouver Sun interviews cartoonist Scott Underwood.

Unfortunately, Province and Sun readers will have to search to find Slylock Fox. Although the King Features Syndicate strip is in over 300 newspapers worldwide with a combined readership of over 20 million weekly, Underwood’s hometown papers aren’t among them. Owner Postmedia sources its comics and puzzles via a third party [link added].

Notes:

Though not mentioned in the article Scott occasionally co-signs the daily Slylock Fox strip too.

and

“Bob Weber Jr., the Arizona-based son of the strip’s creator.” It is my understanding that while the Senior Weber contributed from the start, and the Slylock Fox site credits him as co-creator, the Comics For Kids feature, and its attendant characters, was a Bob Weber, Jr. idea*.

*It has been confirmed that Bob Weber, Jr. was and is the creator of Comics For Kids and Slylock Fox.



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