Dave Coverly
Dave Coverly admits there is no overriding theme, no tidy little philosophy that precisely describes what Speed Bump is about. "Basically," he says, "if life were a movie, these would be the outtakes."
These "outtakes" now appear in over 400 newspapers and websites. In 2000, the first "Speed Bump" book was published, Speed Bump: A Collection of Cartoon Skidmarks (Andrews McMeel). More recent books include Speed Bump: Cartoons for Idea People (2004, ECW Press), which was named Humor Book of the Year by Foreword Magazine, and Just One %$#@ Speed Bump After Another (2005, ECW Press).
In 1995, and again in 2003, Speed Bump was given the Best Newspaper Panel award by the National Cartoonists Society, an honor for which it was also nominated again in 1997, 2001, and 2002. In 1998, the same organization gave him another award for Best Greeting Cards.
In 2009, Coverly was given the prestigious Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year, the highest honor awarded by The National Cartoonists Society. More information on the award and its past winners may be found at www.reuben.org. Visit Dave's website.
Speed Bump Michael Jantze
Michael Jantze’s award-winning background in film, journalism, syndicated newspaper comic strip, publishing and new media led him to produce high-quality animated shorts with memorable characters and hilariously potent messages.
Jantze the human brings his unique sense of design and character to every story he writes: as a newspaper editor, an art director for Industrial Light + Magic, an independent book publisher, a Web designer and as the creator of the internationally syndicated comic strip "The Norm”.
Jantze is also a professor of animation and sequential art at SCAD, the University for Creative Careers, in Savannah, Georgia. He is currently writing a book on comics in new media, due out spring 2013.
Jantze Studios, founded in 2006 to create on-target, short form animations for like-minded clients including Hilton Hotels, YouTube, King Features Syndicate, Lucas Film Online and, most recently, Joe Murray Studio LLC and Werk Wurk Work Feature Films. Visit Michael's Website.
Greg Cravens
Greg Cravens- At 14, the first newspaper that ran his comic strips went under after three weeks. At 18, the theme park where he drew caricatures was torn down and made into a shopping mall. At 22, the university that granted him a Bachelor's Degree changed it's name.
Leaving this trail of destruction at 26, Greg decided to go into advertising, and thus cripple an industry that rightly deserved a good kneecapping.
Then, in 2001, he had the chance to set things right by returning to comic strips. He became Scott Stantis' (Chicago Tribune) chief flunky on his comic strip. Today, Greg creates The Buckets solo (distributed by Universal/Uclick), Hubriscomics.com, and piles of cartoon illustrations for more advertising agencies than it would be wise to shake a stick at. Visit Greg's Website.
The Buckets Hilary Price
Hilary Price has been drawing and writing Rhymes With Orange, her daily newspaper comic strip, since 1995. It has twice won “Best Newspaper Panel” by the National Cartoonists Society and appears in 175 papers. Her work has also appeared in Parade Magazine, The Funny Times, People and Glamour. When she began drawing Rhymes With Orange, she was the youngest woman to ever have a syndicated strip.
Hilary draws the strip in an old toothbrush factory that has since been converted to studio space for artists. She lives in western Massachusetts with her overly large dog and hoodlum cat.
For recreation, Hilary plays women’s ice hockey. When skating, she no longer looks like a Labrador retriever on a hard wood floor scrambling for a tennis ball, but the memory is not very distant.
Her early inspirations were Dr. Seuss for the rhymes, Shel Silverstein for the clever word play and black-and-white illustrations, and The New Yorker cartoonists Roz Chast, Sam Gross and George Booth. She’d like to think like Roz Chast, draw like George Booth, and have the chutzpah of Sam Gross. Greeting card artist Sandra Boynton was also a major influence.
Her first actual cartoon character was a friendly monster that looked a little like a sitting-down hippopotamus. She used her mother’s blusher from her cosmetic’s bag to “paint” it. That’s probably the last time she has touched a cosmetics bag for any purpose. Visit Hilary's Website.
Rhymes With Orange Norm Feuti
Norm Feuti is a syndicated cartoonist, author and stay-at-home dad living in Plainville, Mass. He is the is the creator of not one, but TWO syndicated comic strips Retail, and Gil. He is also the author of the book "Pretending You Care: The Retail Employee Handbook.".
For more than 15 years, Norm earned a living working in retail management. He has sold everything from men’s footwear, fine jewelry, toys, arts and crafts supplies to giftware, clothing and countless other items. He has even managed his own small business specializing in hard-to-find and unique puzzles and games.
After the birth of his daughter in 2001, Norm’s wife, Jennifer, convinced him to go after his old dream of being a cartoonist. Among other ideas, Norm took to heart the old mantra “write what you know” and submitted a comic based on his experiences working in retail. It was this idea that ultimately caught the attention of King Features’ then Editor-In-Chief, Jay Kennedy. In 2005, Jay offered Norm a syndication contract, and on Jan. 1, 2006, his comic strip Retail was launched in newspapers nationwide.
Feuti grew up in the small town of Pascoag, R.I. He and his older sister were raised by their single mother who worked in a factory assembling screen windows to make ends meet. Growing up in a single-parent family during America’s first “Great Recession” wasn’t always easy, but Norm looks back on his childhood fondly. Feuti uses his own experiences growing up under less than ideal circumstances to tell the story of GIL – a happy kid who humorously struggles with the complex world around him. Visit Norm's Website.
Retail Gil Stephan Pastis
STEPHAN PASTIS is the creator of the quirky comic strip Pearls Before Swine. Appearing in over 650 newspapers worldwide, it also has a loyal audience on the Web (www.pearlscomic.com), where it generates more than two million page views per month.
There have been 19 Pearls book collections published by AndrewsMcMeel Publishing. In 2003 and 2006, the National Cartoonists Society named Pearls the Best Newspaper Comic Strip, and Stephan has been nominated three times for the Society's highest honor, Cartoonist of the Year.
In 2009 and 2010, Stephan visited Iraq and Afghanistan on USO-sponsored tours to visit the troops. Stephan lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., with his wife and two children. Visit Stephan's Blog.
Pearls Before Swine
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