Anyone know how far in advance Dave Barry writes his columns?
I can’t help but notice that his columns are still appearing with (appropriate) Jeff MacNelly cartoons. Since he’s been dead for many weeks, it must mean that Dave writes them well in advance of publication.
Color me out of touch, but I never knew that ol’ dave had kicked the bucket. Apparently neither did anyone on any of his fan pages, or at the Miami Herald. Do you have an obit somewhere?
You misunderstood the OP. Dave is still alive, at least as far as I know. The illustrator of his columns, Jeff MacNelly, died some weeks ago.
AHA! I was taken for a ride by a pronoun. I guess the question I should have read was, “how far in advance does Jeff MacNelly draw his cartoons?”
Well, when you wriote about your family vacations and strange newspaper clippings sent in by readers, it’s a safe guess that you can write your columns several weeks in advance and even clue in your cartoonist about what you’re planning to write so he can start even sooner. Given the busy nature of MacNelly (Shoe, Editorial cartoons, Dave Barry’s column, and I think he did (or co-did) Pluggers) it wouldn’t suprise me if MacNelly did work far in advance. Lord knows that the Chicago Tribune is still printing Shoe comics day after day with his signature on 'em.
First of all, don’t call me Aha. He wouldn’t approve.
Second of all, I must admit that it was a lazy use of pronouns.
Thrid of all, I was assuming that MacNelly didn’t draw the cartoon until he had seen the column in a pretty much completed state (since they often turn on some specific phrase within the column). Was that a mistaken assumption?
I do know that the current Barry column was written within the last two months since it mentions the popularity of Survivor. Though now that I think about it, he could just have added a couple of timely lines to a column he wrote during his 199x trip to Japan and filed away (because Gore was not yet running for president).
The cartoonist who wrote and drew THE LOCKHORNS died about ten years ago. The thing is still appearing on the comics pages. What’s up with that?
Anyone else notice that “Cathy” (which I HATE) is now being drawn my a different person? Doesn’t even look close to similar!
I have a vague recollection of Dave Barry (or maybe it was someone else) talking about how his editor was upset because he had “only” a week’s worth of advance writing. Editors probably get nervous when there’s less than a few week’s worth of material, and I can see why. Hey, Cecil/Ed! Mind contributing your personal experience on this?
That was written by a person? I thought there was just a computer program that recombines the old jokes and prints them out. Is Family Circus written by a person as well?
I read in his second-to-last complilation book that Bill Watterson worked at least three weeks’ ahead of time with Calvin and Hobbes strips. Don’t know if that helps, though.
Ike, I seem to recall that Hoest’s son has inherited an ancient family curse forcing him to draw The Lockhorns in his father’s stead. It is not unlike the Baskerville curse or the House of Usher. It is positively Lovecraftian in its implications.
Look away, my friend, look away.
IIRC, Reg Smythe (Andy Capp) died sometime in 1998. His sig still appears on the strip, so I assume he wrote well in advance. Ol’ Andy has mellowed (doesn’t smoke or beat his wife any more), so perhaps someone else is writing the strip.
And according to the Washington Post, Shoe was being written and drawn by a general staff, with MacNelly being practically uninvolved in the production over the last several years.
A while back, someone new started drawing Sally Forth. Took over for Greg Howard, I guess. Now, the heads of all the characters look like balloons with about a third of the air let out. Weird.
To respond to obfusciatrist’s thrid question –
In a tribute to MacNelly, Barry said that MacNelly often had to draw the illustration well before the column was even close to done. Often he would call Jim with a vague description of what the column would be about, maybe one key joke he was going to work in, and Jim would have to draw based on that.
Dang, didn’t know Dave Barry’s column (which appears in the NY Daily News on Saturday) even had cartoons accompanying it. The News just pastes a photo of Dave’s smiling face at the top of the column, and that’s all folks.