get fuzzy gets funny bone
When U.S. illustrator Darby Conley created a comic strip he couldn't have known the laughs he'd draw north of the border.
Byline: Mike King; The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec)
January 14, 2004
Being a devoted listener of CBC Radio has given U.S. comic-strip illustrator Darby Conley an intimate knowledge of this country that is often prominent in his award-winning work.
"It's satisfying and real rewarding to play to the Canadian crowd," the creator of Get Fuzzy, a wry portrait of single life with pets, told The Gazette yesterday in a phone interview from his Boston-area home.
"I get tons of mail from Canada, much more proportionally than from Americans," Conley said.
Get Fuzzy, which debuted in 1999, appears in 400 newspapers around the world - 10 across Canada, including The Gazette.
"I love running in Canada because you seem to have a better sense of humour," the 33-year-old Concord, Mass., native said.
Although he regularly travels to Atlantic Canada, Conley owes most of his Canuck knowledge to CBC Radio.
"Shelagh Rogers was my favourite and I'm in love with Nancy Wood," he said of the two CBC personalities.
Conley tunes in most often to CBC Montreal and Halifax.
And his best friend from Amherst College in western Massachusetts married a woman from Antigonish, N.S.
That fact contributed to his Get Fuzzy characters - Rob Wilco, a single, mild-mannered advertising executive, along with his cantankerous cat, Bucky, and innocent canine companion, Satchel - making a trip to Nova Scotia last fall to visit Satchel's parents in the Acadian town of Cheticamp on Cape Breton via Antigonish.
Closer to home, in the Nov. 24 panel, Satchel tells Rob he can't find a "Canadian-American dictionary." Bucky chimes in with "Everybody in Canada speaks English, 20 watt," and Rob corrects him with "Well ... not in Quebec they don't." Bucky retorts: "I said in Canada."
Conley revealed yesterday that in a coming Sunday panel, Satchel exclaims: "Je me souviens" and utters some other French phrases. He wouldn't divulge the context, however.
"Canadians are really good at laughing at themselves and that's not always the case with Americans," Conley said.
That was clear when he recently raised the ire of Pittsburgh residents when his strip - not even carried there - lampooned the steel city as a tourist destination known primarily for its industrial smell. Conley atoned in a light-hearted manner through subsequent strips.
Last May, he was honoured with the 2003 Reuben Award for best newspaper comic strip by the National Cartoonists Society.
mking[at]thegazette.canwest.comBACK TO TOP