Are you addicted to the catchy theme song that opens up Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks on Adult Swim? Yeah, you know you are. The artist behind this track is a talented guy named Asheru.

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Cartoonist Hasn’t Answered Pleas to Resume Comic Strip

By Laura Sessions Stepp
Washington Post Staff Writer

It’s over for “The Boondocks” comic strip, at least for now. After six years — a remarkably short run for a strip that found its way into 300-plus newspapers, including The Washington Post — Universal Press Syndicate told subscribers yesterday they should start looking for someone to replace political/social satirist Aaron McGruder.

McGruder, a Columbia native who in his twenties became the Garry Trudeau of the hip-hop generation, took a sabbatical six months ago to recharge. The syndicate kept checking with him, reminding him that its newspaper clients needed several weeks in order to prepare for his return or his departure.

Apparently, the mind behind young black radicals Huey and Riley Freeman has gone Hollywood, or at least has further hopes of doing so, and has decided he can’t devote himself to the grind of a daily strip. His late-night animated show, “The Boondocks,” on the Cartoon Network was recently renewed for another season, the first-season DVD is out, and a film is reportedly in the works.

Perhaps for McGruder, whose broad and sometimes outrageous characterizations forced readers to confront racial stereotypes and caused cartoon editors to blanch, the future of the funny papers is in pixels rather than picas.

The cartoonist, 31, did not respond to a request for comment yesterday. A message on his voicemail indicated he was taking some time to “restore his creative juices.”

The heavies at Universal are clearly not happy with the way McGruder handled the situation, although they worded their news release carefully.

“Although Aaron McGruder has made no statement about retiring or resuming The Boondocks for print newspapers . . . newspapers should not count on it coming back in the foreseeable future,” Universal’s president, Lee Salem, said in the release. “Numerous attempts . . . to pin McGruder down on a date that the strip would be coming back were unsuccessful.”

According to industry sources, McGruder’s editor at Universal, Greg Melvin, flew to Los Angeles recently and spent a couple of days trying to get the cartoonist to abide by the terms of his agreement to return in six months.

“We were getting dozens of phone calls every day from newspapers asking when he was coming back,” Salem said in a telephone interview. “It seemed unfair to keep them dangling.” He added that if McGruder decides to return, Universal would welcome him back.

McGruder created “The Boondocks” in 1997 for the Diamondback, the student newspaper at the University of Maryland, and was getting nibbles from television types, according to Salem, when Universal signed him in 1999.

The strip came at a time when newspapers were hungry for a hip black cartoonist, and McGruder had attitude to spare. His work either infuriated readers or made them laugh out loud.

He routinely slapped around Black Entertainment Television and its founder, Bob Johnson, for its dependence on booty-shaking videos. His strips after the invasion of Iraq about Condoleezza Rice needing a man were provocative enough that many papers, including The Post, refused to run them.

His apparent departure raises several questions, according to those in the industry. Is he pulling a Dave Chappelle here? The 33-year-old comedian stunned his fans when he bolted last year from his Comedy Central show, ditching a $50 million deal and returning to a stand-up tour onstage.

If McGruder is really a political commentator at heart, will he miss the immediacy of a daily strip? “I’m not going to say a strip carries the same rewards as TV, but you can comment with far more immediacy,” Salem said.

And how successful will he be without his daily newspaper base?

Other cartoonists have successfully pursued outside interests, aided in part, says Jake Morrissey, a New York editor who worked with cartoonists at United Media and Universal Press, because “every single day their work was in front of millions of people’s eyes.”

Some of them also took sabbaticals when at the top of their game — Garry Trudeau after 12 years penning “Doonesbury” and Bill Watterson after six years with “Calvin and Hobbes”; Gary Larson walked away from “The Far Side” for several years. When they returned, so did their readers.

But there’s no guarantee that will happen. Says Morrissey, “When you leave, Americans’ attention goes on to something else.”

The Boondocks is a daily comic strip and now a weekly animation that was created by Aaron McGruder in 1997. Aaron was born in Chicago and went to the University of Maryland where he got his bachelors in African studies. McGruder started writing this strip while working in the presentation center of University of Maryland. His strip debuted in the college’s newspaper called Diamondback. The strip quickly moved from the Diamondback pages in 1997 into the monthly hip hop magazine known as Source. Due to the increasing popularity and loyal fan base of the comic strip, it was then picked up by the Universal Press Syndicate in 1999, making its national debut on April 19 of that same year.

The Boondocks is a popular and very controversial strip, which deals with different issues involving the African-American community, American politics, etc. However, these issues are seen through the eyes of its main character, a ten-year-old African American boy named Huey Freeman.

McGruder sold the television and film rights for The Boondocks to Sony Pictures Entertainment. In the fall of 2005, the strip was adapted into an animated television series with the same name, for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming section. The great success of The Boondocks on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim earned it a second season.

Aaron McGruder in his own right is an activist who frequently speaks on political and cultural issues, some which he as even displayed in his comic strip.

To be honest, I don’t fully agree on a lot of McGruder’s views and approach, but I would definitely give him the respect I think he well earned on his work.

McGruder has been able to display his views about the community in relating to politics, racism, violence and things of this nature. Although McGruder maintains many stereotypes in strip, he tries to keep the strip as accurate as he possibly can. Whether one likes, dislikes, agrees or disagrees with what is portrayed in The Boondocks, I believe most would admit that it is a good comic strip.

Any person who desires to create a good comic strip can definitely learn from McGruder. McGruder knows he has something to say and a story to tell. Even though his story was seen as very controversial stories, and something that would not be successful, he still spoke out and told his story.

In my opinion McGruder has what many comic strip and book creators of this age are lacking, which is the combination of a willingness to tell a purposeful story and passion for the story.

As a writer, author or comic strip creator, you have to have something to say and you have to have something to offer. I say this because many have compromised their voice to try and gain more recognition or make more money.

Creating a strip like The Boondocks comes with a price because of its outspoken nature concerning politics, cultural and socio-economic class issues. The strip has been withheld by newspapers on many occasions. McGruder has received many complaints from whites and blacks as well. And still, no compromise for McGruder. He continues to try and write what he sees, feels and knows, with a voice that is his own.

The point is not to try and make a controversial strip, but staying true to your work and yourself. Don’t be a copycat. Everyone has a voice, except many choose to let their voice get lost in the crowd. As a creator you have to have something to say and you must let it be your voice. In my opinion, The Boondocks is a good example of this.
by Gideon O

District Attorney and law-abiding citizen Tom DuBois fits the description of the elusive “X-box Killer” and is arrested. Huey has to find the real killer, before Tom is shipped off to “real” prison where he will most assuredly be anally raped. Written by Aaron McGruder & Rodney Barnes

During a run-in in the mall parking lot that quickly escalates into a fist fight, Grandad gets his ass whooped by a blind man. He struggles with putting the incident behind him and keeping his ego intact while being teased mercilessly by Riley. Written by Aaron McGruder & Rodney Barnes.

Robert “Grandad” Freeman infatuation with a young women named Cristal (Like the champaigne concerns Huey and Riley. The boys fear they’ll soon have a ‘hoe’ for a grandmother. Written by Aaron McGruder & Rodney Barnes.