quickly found a niche as a satire of office life. (So fo-
cused was the strip on the corporate workplace that
many papers ran it in the business section rather
than the comics page.) Characters included the
dictatorial but very stupid Pointy-haired Boss, the
competent but frustrated Alice, and Wally, whose
life is dedicated to avoiding work.Dilbert’s simple,
stylized art with virtually no detail was a good fit to
the shrunken space allotted to newspaper strips.
Dilbertdeveloped into a massive commercial em-
pire, with numerous collections in print, spin-off
books, stationery, dolls, and an animated TV series
that ran on the United Paramount Network (UPN)
in 1999 and 2000. Adams used the Internet to foster
a community among his readers, appealing for
workplace anecdotes he could use for strip ideas.
Adams andDilberthave won numerous awards, in-
cluding the National Cartoonist Society’s Reuben
Award for 1997.
Successful newcomers in the 1990’s included
Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman’sZits(1997), starring
fifteen-year-old Jeremy Duncan, his family, and
friends; and Darby Conley’sGet Fuzzy(1999), star-
ring a Boston adman named Rob Wilco and his talk-
ing pets, Bucky Katt and Satchel Pooch.
Political Comics Garry Trudeau’s liberalDoones-
bur yremained the premier political comic strip dur-
ing the decade.Doonesbur y’s sometimes controver-
sial political content led some newspapers to put the
comic strip on the editorial page or elsewhere away
from the main comics page. One newcomer, Aaron
McGruder’sThe Boondocks(1997), also featured po-
litical commentary and controversy. The strip’s
main characters are two young African American
brothers, the intensely political Huey and the would-
be gangster Riley. The strip derived much of its
power from its distinctively left-wing African Ameri-
can perspective, one not seen before on the comics
page. Although several daily newspaper strips fea-
tured African American creators and casts in the
1990’s, there were no strips from Latino, Asian
American, Native American, or openly gay or lesbian
perspectives.
Trudeau’s liberal dominance of the daily newspa-
per comics page was challenged by Johnny Hart’s oc-
casional dabbling in evangelical Christian politics in
B.C., and Bruce Tinsley’s conservativeMallard Fill-
more(1991), starring the eponymous talking duck.
Mallard Fillmorewas widely syndicated, but it did not
remotely approach the artistic and commercial suc-
cess or cultural impact ofDoonesbur y.
Alternatives to Daily Newspapers Weekly periodi-
cals such as New York’sVillage Voicewere an outlet for
comic strips whose subject matter was too controver-
sial or formats too experimental for daily newspa-
pers and the dominant syndicates, providing greater
creative control but less money. Comics appearing
in the “alternative media” included Ben Katchor’s
surrealJulius Knipl, Real Estate Photographerand many
strips featuring left-wing political and cultural satire,
such as Tom Tomorrow’sThis Modern Worldand
Ruben Bolling’sTom the Dancing Bug. The gay and
lesbian press provided homes for Alison Bechdel’s
long-running lesbian epicDykes to Watch Out Forand
Eric Orner’s gay male soap operaThe Mostly Unfab-
ulous Social Life of Ethan Green, among other strips
for and about gays and lesbians.
The technology of the World Wide Web opened
up the potential for vast audiences for comic strips
outside the shrinking newspaper world. In addition
to the Web presences established for existing and
new newspaper comics, the 1990’s also saw the in-
vention of the webcomic, a comic strip existing
solely or primarily on the Web. Early examples of
successful webcomics included Bill Holbrook’s
Kevin and Kell(1995) and Peter Zale’sHelen, Sweet-
heart of the Internet(1996). Because of the individual-
ist nature of the Web, these comics addressed a
smaller, niche audience rather than the broad-based
one that newspaper comics formerly addressed.
Impact Comic strips addressed a shrinking audi-
ence in newspapers during the 1990’s, but by the
end of the decade they had found a new and effec-
tive platform on the Web. Although the comics page
was slow to change, it reflected developments such
as the rise of the computer and software industry
and the political conflicts of liberals and conserva-
tives in the Bill Clinton era.Further Reading
McCloud, Scott.Reinventing Comics: How Imagination
and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form.New
York: HarperCollins, 2000. This work by one of
the most influential thinkers about comics in-
cludes extensive discussion of the impact of the
Internet on comics.
Nordling, Lee.Your Career in the Comics. Kansas City,
Mo.: Andrews McMeel, 1995. An exhaustive studyThe Nineties in America Comic strips 215