Name Darby Conley Role Cartoonist | ||
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Books Loserpalooza, Groovitude, Scrum Bums, The Stinking: A Get Fuzzy, The Dog Is Not a Toy | ||
Maybe the Pet?
Darby Conley is an American cartoonist best known for the newspaper comic strip Get Fuzzy.
Contents
Biography
Darby Conley's first cartoons appeared in the Doyle High Trailblazer, his school paper in Knoxville, Tennessee. His single-panel strip of weirdness won him first place in a News-Sentinel student cartoon competition in 1986, thus planting the idea of someday becoming a professional cartoonist.
He went on to earn a Fine Arts/Art History degree from Amherst College in Massachusetts, continuing to improve his Far Side clones for the Amherst Student, graduating in 1994. While a student in college, he played rugby. Conley was also a member of an all-male, jazz-influenced a cappella group, the Zumbyes.
Get Fuzzy
Comics syndicate United Media agreed in 1999 to publish Conley's new strip Get Fuzzy about an anthropomorphic cat, Bucky, and dog, Satchel, living with their single young-male owner, Rob Wilco, which premiered on September 6, 1999. The idea for Bucky's character came from a friend's Siamese. Daily strips of Get Fuzzy ended in 2013 and were replaced by reruns; as of 2017 the Sunday strips are also in reruns.
Awards
Controversies
On October 30, 2003, the city of Pittsburgh served as the punch line of a strip about tourism destinations based on smells. Offended residents of the area deluged the author with negative feedback that included death threats.
A May 13, 2005 strip portrayed Boston-area sports reporter Bob Lobel as a drunk, prompting Lobel to file libel lawsuits against Conley and his syndicate.