Patrick McDonnell, Creator of Mutts

Mutts grew out of McDonnell's continuing art work. "The whole time I was doing magazine illustrations, it was like a comic strip in my head. I was using the same characters in a lot of my illustrations, and sometimes I even used word balloons," he said in an interview with princetoninfo.com. King Features picked up the cartoonist's submission and launched Mutts into syndication in 1994. "As soon as I tried the strip," McDonnell added, "I felt I was home." Mutts now appears in more than 500 newspapers in 20 countries around the world.

The amusing comic strip immediately attracted the attention of delighted comics fans and animal lovers. McDonnell received the National Cartoonist Society's "Best Comic Strip of the Year" in 1997 plus the prestigious Reuben award for Cartoonist of the Year in 1999. The Max and Moritz "International Cartoonist of the Year" was given to McDonnell from Germany in 1998 and he earned the Harvey Award for "Best Comic Strip five times - 1997, 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2003. McDonnell has received numerous awards from the HSUS, including two Genesis Awards, in 1997 and 1999, and the PETA Humanitarian Award in 2001. He holds a position as a member of the Board of Directors of the Humane Society of the United States.

Since the first book of Mutts strips was published in 1996, there have been seven more collections put out, including "Mutts Sundays" and "Sunday Mornings." The latest offerings of strips are "What Now?" published in 2001 by Andrews McMeel Publishing, plus the autobiographical "Mutts: The Comic Art of Patrick McDonnell" is due out in November, 2003, by Abrams. Mutts can also be found in calendars, Gibson Greetings cards and in a Japanese lifestyle magazine entitled "Mutts Magazine." As McDonnell is a comics history buff, he and his wife Karen O'Connell co-wrote the book "Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Harriman," published by Abrams in 1986. (Karen O'Connell also works in computers and is a yoga instructor.)

Patrick McDonnell prefers his comic strip to have meaning, to tell stories. "You're trying to write a little novel. I really enjoy doing those," McDonnell noted. His Mutts comic strip earned distinguished kudos from high places; it was a favourite of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. In the foreword of the first Mutts collection Schulz wrote, "To me, 'Mutts' is exactly what a comic strip should be. It is always fun to look at, and

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