Jerry Scott
Biography
Jerry Scott
Cartoonist-writer Jerry Scott has become a superstar of the cartoon world. Not only did Baby Blues, the popular comic strip he co-produces with Rick Kirkman, reach the 1,000-newspaper-clients milestone in 2006 – an accomplishment shared by fewer than 12 other comic strips in syndication – but he joins only three other cartoonists (Mort Walker, Dik Browne and Johnny Hart) in comic art history to ever have had two strips distributed simultaneously to more than 1,000 newspapers each.
Jerry Scott started cartooning professionally in the mid-1970s by submitting gag cartoons to magazines. In 1983, he was asked to take over the Nancy comic strip, which he continued to create for 12 years. In 1988, he got together with longtime friend Rick Kirkman and started kicking around ideas for a new strip. The result was Baby Blues, which was first released on Jan. 7, 1990.
King Features Syndicate now distributes the daily strip to more than 1,000 newspapers in 28 countries and 13 languages. There are 28 Baby Blues books in print.
Scott created Zits in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman. Zits made its debut in July 1997 in more than 200 newspapers – one of the strongest comic-strip introductions in years. King Features now distributes Zits to more than 1,500 newspapers. Zits garnered the top prize in the National Cartoonists Society (NCS) Newspaper Comic Strip category for two consecutive years (1998 and 1999) and, in July 2000, received the German Cartoonists Association’s Max and Moritz Prize for Best International Comic Strip. Scott accepted the NCS’s highest honor, the Reuben Award for “Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year,” in 2002 for his work on Zits and Baby Blues.
In 2002, Scott was honored for his work on Nancy, Baby Blues and Zits by the Swedish Academy of Comic Art as “Best International Comic-Strip Cartoonist.” The Academy’s prestigious Adamson Statuette was presented at ceremonies during the Gothenburg Book Fair, the annual publishing trade show held each year in Sweden.
Scott was born in South Bend, Ind. He, his wife, Kim, and their two daughters now live in California.
Jerry Scott
