NEW SIGNATURES ON STRIPS

At Adam@Home, Brian Basset, who originated the strip, has relinquished drawing and production chores (and perhaps gag-writing) to Rob Harrell, who gave up his own strip, Big Top, a year or so ago in order to undergo surgery for a cancerous eye. He has survived, thanks be, and can draw just fine, perhaps even better, or at least more copiously, than Basset. Harrell’s line is not as wispy, fragile even, as Basset’s (note the treatment of hands), and while his characters seem a little less elongated than Basset’s, Harrell often fills panels with figures drawn from head to knee, or thereabouts, which is more than Basset was doing: in recent years, talking heads predominated in Adam. Harrell’s Laura seems a bit sexier than Basset’s, too, but Harrell took a while to get Adam’s nose right. Basset brought Harrell into the Adam operation so that he, Basset, would have more time to devote to his other strip, Red and Rover, about a small boy and his dog.

Another strip that has acquired a second hand on the tiller is Grand Avenue, a neighborhood saga about an avid sports fan grandmother who is raising rambunctious twins that Steve Breen launched in 1999. Breen, who just won the Headliner Award for his editorial cartoons at the San Diego Union Tribune, fell frequently into conversation with his counterpart at the Detroit Free Press, Mike Thompson,  when the two were attending the annual meetings of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Once, Breen told Alan Gardner at DailyCartoonist.com, Thompson followed him to his room to kibitz while Breen did some work on the strip. Thompson offered some gags, and Breen was impressed, he said, “with Mike’s understanding of the characters and his talent for brainstorming and idea generation. I was looking for help with the strip because I was starting to also do children’s books ( this was around 2005 or 2006) so it worked out nicely.” The two share writing and drawing chores, and Thompson began to get his name on the strip on January 1, 2009.