The (Springfield) Republican had carried the Ask Shagg comic strip by Peter Guren.
With the feature ending, editor Cynthia G. Simison asked Peter about his past…
For the next two years, Guren says, he worked among an inspiring group of cartoon artists, many of whom were just like him, pitching their comic strip ideas to syndicates. “It was the best job you could ever get,” he remembers of the floor at American Greetings where a dead plant greeted everyone getting off the elevator. “It had a sign, ‘Do not feed this plant. It’s being punished.’”
and his future:
About five years ago, he published a children’s book, “There’s a Hippo in My Closet (and other reasons for not going to bed).” His children (two sons and a daughter ranging from 42 to 36) and grandchildren (six of them from ages 1 to 7) have convinced him to turn to writing and illustrating children’s books full-time. His latest, “Time to Wake Up Daddy,” with a story line that follows two young children with a father deep asleep and snoring loudly, was sent to his agent just this week.
“It was the Herald, which decided to use Shagg on its pets page, that cemented his concept for a weekly panel cartoon.”
Sigh. I’ll bet readers looked forward to the “pets page.”
That was back when newspapers gave a damn.
The Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE a decade or so ago tried running POOCH CAFE in the “pets” area of their want ads section. As I recall, the experiment lasted something like three months before they dropped it. (Maybe the bad behavior of the strip’s lead character, and many of his companions, caused too many prospective dog owners to change their minds?)