McGruder speaks on satire and transitioning to TV

Mike Cavna continues to provide interviews with cartoonists of note. Last week was Garry Trudeau on the topic of satire. This week we get a peak at Aaron McGruder’s view of satire and his transition to television.

How difficult was the transition from a static newspaper strip to your animated show?

McGRUDER: I went in knowing the show couldn’t be the strip, aside from the topicality. Those jokes don’t “land” at all on television. We didn’t re-create the strip on TV — we wanted to keep the characters the same but make it stand on its own. That’s hard — we certainly didn’t get it right away. We struggled with Huey for a long time. Granddad just worked right from the bat. A lot of those Season One episodes were really rough. … That first season was rough. it almost killed me and everyone around me.

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