In 1998, duties on the Heathcliff newspaper comic were handed off by [George] Gately and his brother John Gallagher to their nephew, Peter Gallagher, who has been drawing the strip ever since.
Somewhere between 1998 and now, shit got weird.
© Creators Syndicate
I think I maybe started working with them around 1994. You know, they were kind of getting older. And then in ‘98, I took over drawing. Before that, I was doing ideas. It was my two uncles, and another guy Bob Laughlin, who was their inker. It was the three of them doing it, and they would use my ideas. I would see my ideas published, and it was really exciting. But then, the big leap was drawing it and getting their drawing style down and laying it out. Like, that was really time-consuming and hard work. When they decided to retire, it was like kind of being thrown into the deep end of the pool.
For Solrad Andrew Neal interviews Heathcliff cartoonist Peter Gallagher.
I always think the fine line that you walk, when you’re writing gags, you know, is over-explaining it. If you over-explain it, you ruin it. If you under-explain it, then people are confused, and they don’t know what to do. And after doing it for a number of years, that’s the thing that I’m always concerned about: the amount of explaining and over-explaining, and I think I’ve decided on the under-explaining. And it’s a daily comic. So if you don’t understand this one, I hope that if people read it on a regular basis, maybe they’ll kind of start to understand what’s going on with it.
Heathcliff can be read at the Creators Syndicate site or at GoComics.
Andrew’s earlier article in praise of the Peter Gallagher Heathcliff.
The cartoon of Mr. Magoo saying “Hello, Garfield!” to Heathcliff will always be a favorite for me, especially since Heathcliff has been around longer than Garfield.