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.