Dallas Morning News columnist Mike Peters writes a column that reads like an obit for Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks.Almost overnight, Mr. McGruder was a self-made social commentator, eager to shake our easy assumptions about race.”I don’t write The Boondocks for black people,” he told me in 2003…. I’m trying to make white people see and think about black people.”He did.
I’m still trying to catch up from last weeks vacation and it’s not looking like I’m going to be able to give these stories the individual attention that they deserve, but I wanted to make sure they got some play on the blog.
Tribune Media Services has launched a new comic feature called Raising Hector. The strip has been around in self-syndication since 1996, according to this story in E&P, and is created by Peter Ramirez who is a former police officer – now stay at home dad (which is also the premise of the feature).
Up for election are Lio, On a Claire Day, F-minus, Brevity, and Silo Roberts…. It is my opinion that if one is going to post an online survey, one ought to take the basic steps of preventing multiple voting (or at least try).
For a feature built upon tall-tales, the story line this week has been the truth. Hollis Brown and Wes Hargis’ have decided to end the strip. Starting Monday, the strip has featured its characters talking about the impending end of the strip – even making fun of it’s attempt to reinvent it’s premise in June. According to Rose M. McAllister, Marketing Manager at King Features, the two cartoonists have terminated the strip due to lack of subscribing newspapers.
From the Tina’s Groove web site comes news that Tina’s Groove creator, Rina Piccolo, and her husband Brendan Burford (an editor at King Features) will be the featured speakers at the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art on October 16th and will speak on the topic of comics and cartooning. For location and time, visit Rina’s web site.
Today marks 75 years since Dick Tracy appeared on the comics pages. Several cartoonist are paying tribute. Here is a list of features that I’ve been able to find that mention, display or otherwise give homage to Chester Gould’s creation:
With news last week that Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks is on a permanent hiatus, it will be interesting to see how quickly the roughly 100 subscribing newspapers drop The Boondocks reruns and pick a new feature…. Perhaps a question of greater interest is how many papers will replace The Boondocks with another strip that features predominately African-American or minority characters such as Candorville, or Watch Your Head.
Within the press release of Aaron McGruder’s news that The Boondocks’ hiatus may be permanent, is a little tidbit that Universal Press will be launching a new feature called Maintaining in January. Maintaining is by Nate Creekmore, who developed the feature during college. Nate is a two-time recipient of the Charles M. Schulz College Cartoonist Award in 2003 and in 2004 as well as best college cartoonist by the Associated Collegiate Press. The feature is about a bi-racial high school student named Marcus.Â
From an article in the Tennessean, we learn that the feature has been under a development contract for the last year.
You can see samples of Nate’s work on his web site.
I read with interest the story posted last week regarding Doonesbury.com adding a blog to its site featuring entries from soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and then another story linked from Tom Spurgeon’s Comics Reporter about Garry’s decision to use his B.D. character as a way of highlighting the sacrifices soldiers are making overseas and it occurs to me that perhaps today, Garry Trudeau is our generation’s Bill Mauldin.
As a fan of music, Charles Schulz named Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in a strip, which started a correspondance and inspired the composer to create music based on Peanuts characters. The latest performance is being recorded for PBS to air on stations in October.
New Hampshire resident Allison Barrows talks about her comic strip “PreTeena” which is syndicated by in over 100 papers by Universal Press Syndicate.
Plans to erect a statue in memory of famous cartoon character Andy Capp are pressing ahead after the idea was backed in a poll.
Garry Trudeau, the award-winning creator of the Doonesbury cartoon strip, stopped by the Pentagon to visit with wounded servicemembers and to sign his latest book. According to the story, Trudeau will be launching a military blog on doonesbury.com on October 8 and will feature entries from servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the Editor and Publisher, fellow cartoonists Willey Miller, Darrin Bell, Houston Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen, and Chicago Tribune associate managing editor Geoff Brown all weigh in on Aaron McGruder’s decision to not continue with “The Boondocks.”