Darby Conley is an American

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...

best known for the newspaper

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

'' Get Fuzzy''.

Biography

Conley was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1970, and grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. While in high school in 1986, he won a student cartooning competition. During his Senior Year at Doyle High School (now South-Doyle High School) in Knoxville, Conley was voted 'Most Talented' by his graduating class. Conley was a member of

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...

a cappella ''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Ren ...

group, the Zumbyes. Conley cited the Tintin books as the strongest visual inspiration for his work.

''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 cat. Without explanation, Conley stopped drawing daily ''Get Fuzzy'' strips in 2013. For some time after he drew Sunday strips only, though the last known new Sunday installment was on March 31, 2019. Repeats of the strip are still offered to newspapers today.

Awards

* 2002,

National Cartoonists Society The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...

Award for Newspaper Comic Strip.

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 Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

lawsuits against Conley and his syndicate. The parties announced in November 2005 that they had reached a settlement, although terms of the settlement were not disclosed. As part of the follow-up, the New Bedford Standard-Times dropped ''Get Fuzzy'' from its comics lineup."Bob Lobel Settles LIbel Lawsuit with Darby Conley" (Sports Law, 22 November 2005) accessed 9 March 2019
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References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Conley, Darby American comic strip cartoonists Amherst College alumni People from Knoxville, Tennessee People from Concord, Massachusetts 1970 births Living people Artists from Tennessee Artists from Massachusetts