A Darrin Bell Comics Timeline
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As it now stands the newspaper cartooning career of Darrin Bell has come to an end. The egregious charges against him resulted in papers carrying his comics to drop them as soon as they could, some in mid-week. The syndicate continued to distribute Candorville to newspapers willing to wait for a final verdict. But Bell hewed close to deadlines, keeping his comic strip as current as possible with political and societal events. So when he was taken to County there wasn’t a lot in the pipeline to send to subscribers. When the small backlog was depleted King Features decided to end their association with Candorville rather than issue reruns until a judgement, one way or another, had been passed.
No doubt Bell, due to the charges filed against him, has been barred from computer access, so if he is creating new material he has no way to distribute it. So, at least for the moment, Bell’s career as a newspaper cartoonist has come to an end. Following is a timeline of that career.
Darrin Bell, born 1975, began getting published as a freshman at the University of California – Berkeley with his Lemont Brown comic strip for the student paper The Daily Californian.
While still a student Bell began creating and sending political cartoons to wider circulation newspapers.
After college Bell continued the Lemont Brown comic strip for The Daily Californian and continued sending editorial cartoons to newspapers. That turned out to be how Matt Richtel found him and talked him into collaborating on a new comic. That would be around 1997.
Rudy Park by Bell and Richtel (under the pseudonym Theron Heir) began appearing in Silicon Valley tech magazines and The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Jose Mercury-News around 1999.
After a couple years of self-syndication the weekly strip was picked up by United Feature Syndicate (UFS) as a daily and Sunday strip in 2001.
Meanwhile…
Bell had been in contact with the Washington Post Writers Group about developing the Lemont Brown strip into a nationally syndicated comic. With a title change to Candorville that happened on October 19, 2003.
Two daily nationally syndicated comic strip pretty much put the kibosh on editorial cartooning. But in 2012 The Washington Post Writers Group requested that Bell return to opinion cartooning (not that Candorville and Rudy Park were lacking political points of view). That same year Richtel/Heir took a, what turned out to be a permanent, sabbatical from Rudy Park leaving the writing to Bell.
Darrin Bell was a busy man: writing and drawing two syndicated daily and Sunday comic strips and one or two editorial cartoons a week. Something had to give. The low circulation Rudy Park started going into reruns more and more often. Finally in 2018 Bell combined both comic strips into one. The newspapers that carried Rudy Park would eventually rename that comic strip Candorville later in 2018.
Rudy Park reruns are currently being syndicated by Counterpoint Media – maybe. Arcamax continues to carry Rudy Park reruns but January 25, 2025 was the last daily there to carry a “Dist. by Counterpoint Media” slug and February 2, 2025 the same for Sundays.
The last Darrin Bell political cartoon was a Counterpoint newsletter cartoon distributed by King Features (Bell had switched his editoons to King Features in 2018) on January 10, 2025. The last daily Candorville (now also syndicated by King Features) appeared in newspapers on January 25, 2025.
As far as can be determined the last published Sunday Candorville was the issue for February 2, 2025 (Stars and Stripes, Detroit Free Press). There was a final, never printed in newspapers Candorville Sunday page that King Features distributed to subscribers for the February 9, 2025 date.
Per Mike Rhode the final February 9, 2025 Candorville Sunday strip was published by at least one newspaper – The Washington Post.
The syndicates – Washington Post Writers Group, King Features (Candorville and political cartoons), and Andrews McMeel (Rudy Park) – have erased all archives of Darrin Bell material leaving Arcamax, Stars and Stripes, and Candorville.com the only alternatives to easily access Bell comics from the recent past.
All comics and images © Darrin Bell
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