Bob Gorrell – An Illustrious 50 Year Career – Illustrated
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Bob Gorrell last November announced he was retiring after a half century of cartooning.
For almost 50 years, I’ve had the incredible privilege of foisting my personal opinions on the innocent public through my editorial cartoons. Now is the perfect time to retire from that and move on to other interests and passions in my life. I want to thank all the great editors and syndicates that have supported me through the years, and I truly appreciate all the comments both positive and negative that my cartoons have elicited.
Bob Gorrell began his cartooning career in the early 1970s at the Virginia Episcopal School (Lynchburg, Va.) high school, and then in Charlottesville at The University of Virginia’s The Cavalier Daily during the mid-1970s. Immediately following that he was drawing for The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress in 1976.
Young Bob stayed at The Daily Progress from August 1976 until April 1978, moving to The Ft. Myers News-Press in May 1978.
Gorrell’s southern sojourn editorial cartoonist and staff artist in Florida ended in late 1979 when he went north finding gainful employment in his birth state at The Charlotte (N.C.) News beginning December 14, 1979.
Bob stayed with The Charlotte News until March 8, 1983 (above) at which time he returned to Virginia joining The Richmond News Leader.
Gorrell stayed with The Richmond News-Leader until 1992, when…
The News-Leader merged with The Richmond Times-Dispatch (both owned by Richmond Newspapers, Inc/Media General). Beginning June 1, 1992 Bob Gorrell became a staff cartoonist for the Times-Dispatch, joining Gary Brookins who had been with The Times-Dispatch as cartoonist since 1979.
After his January 2, 1998 cartoon (above right, above left is Gorrell’s first Times-Dispatch cartoon from June 2, 1992) Bob resigned from the paper to go freelance as a syndicated cartoonist distributed by Creators. Let it be noted that Gorrell’s cartoons had been distributed to newspapers throughout the nation since his Charlottesville Daily Progress days.
Here we will turn the from the ed-op section to the funny pages.
Not long after Bob Gorrell’s arrival in Richmond he and Gary Brookins struck up a friendship that resulted in collaborations. The first non-ed/op creation from that partnership was the syndicated Cobwebs comic strip. From Allan Holtz:
Both creators were fans of horror and monster movies, so they came up with a strip idea that they hoped would be the comic strip equivalent of the movie Young Frankenstein. Cobwebs brought together a team of classic horror movie characters — Dracula, the Wolf-Man, the Mummy, Frankenstein, a mad scientist and a hunch-backed henchman — into a comic strip that spoofed the genres. Gorrell supplied layouts and pencilled art, Brookins inked, and both creators supplied gags.
Cobwebs, syndicated by Asterisk Features, ran from May 12, 1986 (above) to May 30, 1987. A decade later the pair teamed up on another comic, this one was right in their wheelhouse – Muddle America was a political panel intended to go on newspapers’ opinion pages.
The self-syndicated panel was issued twice a week (sometimes thrice, occasionally once). It started in the cartoonists’ home paper of The Richmond Times-Dispatch on February 10, 1996 (above). In January 1997 the panel format was changed to vertical and at sometime later in 1997 Creators Syndicate picked it up for distribution. Allan Holtz says it was drawn by Gorrell and written by Brookins. In July 1998 Brookins dropped out and Gorrell continued the panel until September 12, 1998 (below) by which time Creators Syndicate had also dropped out apparently and the panel was only occasionally appearing in The Times-Dispatch.
Soon after Muddle America disappeared Bob went solo with a non-political panel about a cat named Toby. Toby supposedly ran from September 1998 to sometime in 1999. I can find no samples, above is the cover to Creators Syndicate’s press kit.
During all this comic strip/panel creativity Bob Gorrell continued his political cartooning (as did Gary Brookins) and in May of 2002 he signed with AOL News to supply cartoons for the (then) internet giant, cartoons that would be syndicated by Creators a day or two after their online appearance.
The Gorrell/AOL association lasted until December 2004 (above right).
Since then Bob has drawn political cartoons for distribution by Creators … until his retirement in November 2024. We wish Bob a happy retirement with maybe an occasional reappearance (hint).
Judge Magney, newspapers.com, and the Kiwanis Club of Richmond
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