Comic strips

Cartoonists in the news: Jerry Scott

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Alan Gardner October 16, 2007 1 minute 5 comments

San Louis Obispo’s newspaper, The Tribune, has a lengthy article on Jerry Scott – one of only three cartoonists to have two comic features in 1000+ papers at the same time. The article explains how Jerry met up with Rick Kirkman to create Baby Blues (Jerry is the writer) and how he hooked up with Jim Borgman to create Zits (Jerry is the writer for Zits) and discusses his years drawing the comic strip Nancy:

“I hated that strip. I’d been putting that strip down for years, at least to the editors. I’d say, ‘Why don’t you drop that strip – it’s obviously past its prime.”

As an aside, I remember sitting next to Jim in Phoenix Arizona during the 1996 AAEC convention watching a presentation by Jerry and Rick on why editorial cartoonists shouldn’t go into comic strips. Little did I know that Jim and Jerry were already into their collaboration and Zits would be launching the next year – setting a record for launching with over 200 newspapers.

Come to think of it, I have a lot of memories about that convention – I remember seeing a cartoonist idol of mine across the convention hall and I tried to make my way over to introduce myself, only to see him slip out the door. I followed him out just in time to see him enter the mens room. Thinking that I had better take care of business myself, I too entered the restroom and found myself standing at the urinal right next to this cartoon idol of mine. Supposing that this wasn’t the most appropriate time to make introductions, I decided to wait until we were both outside, but when I saw him leave without washing his hands, I decided I could wait a day before saying hi. The convention wrapped up before I had a chance to meet him and despite attending two other conventions in later years have never had the chance to shake his hand – and if I ever do – you know I’m going to be wondering if he washed them. I probably ought to clarify that while I idolized Jim (I really didn’t know who Jerry and Kirk were at the time), none of these three are the cartoonist in question. Feel free to shake their hand if you ever meet them.

Apologies to Jerry for hijacking the topic of this blog post. It’s a good article (the one in The Tribune, not the blog post), and its well worth your time to read it.