As the introduction said, thirty years ago Dana Summers was already an editorial cartoonist
and comic strip cartoonist when he decided to start another comic strip on March 30, 1992.
From the Orlando Sentinel on the same day as the first Bound & Gagged:
The Sentinel provided some background on their cartoonist:
© Tribune Content Agency
Dana’s routine has not changed much in thirty years.
He continues to create seven Bound & Gagged comics a week, though the multi-panel strips are few and far between these days – panels are now the standard. That first week saw four strips and three panels – these days four strips are about what show up during the course of a year of Bound & Gagged.
Also dialogue has become a more common part of the feature.
On the other hand his comic strip The Middletons is a sequential feature with a panel transformation rarely showing up. Dana workload there increased a couple years ago with the death of his partner Ralph Dunagin. He is now responsible for all seven days of that strip.
Dana is no longer a staff cartoonist for The Sentinel and his editorial cartoons are now offered at the rate of three or four a week instead of six.
His political cartoons, like his comic strips, are syndicated by the Tribune Content Agency.
After leaving The Sentinel and before taking on the entirety of The Middletons
Dana found time to write some fiction.
Tim Ryder is trying to bury the past, but, it’s a stubborn corpse. Seven years ago he drew a cartoon series the earned him a Pulitzer but drove a presidential candidate to kill himself by putting a bullet in his head. After drinking himself to out of the profession, Ryder moved to Orlando, Florida and began drawing for a small daily. But his troubles expand like a fat man at a free buffet.
Congratulation on 30 years being Bound & Gagged Dana! 