Industry news for the professional cartoonist
A new Peanuts animated special will be aired on ABC in late November. The feature called Heâ??s a Bully, Charlie Brown and was the last animated project Charles Schulz worked on before his death in 2000. The special is being produced by Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez (the same individuals who have a long history of working on Charlie Brown animated movies and shows).
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.