Boondocks: Because I Know You Don’t Read The Newspaper
by Aaron McGruder

The Boondocks took the syndication world by storm. The notoriety landed Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder in publications ranging from Time magazine to People magazine which named him one of the "25 Most Intriguing People of ’99." Centered around the experiences of two young African-American boys, Huey and Riley, who move from inner-city Chicago to the suburbs (or the "boondocks" to them), the strip fuses hip-hop sensibilities with Japanese anime-style drawings and a candid discussion of race. In this first collection of Boondocks cartoons, you’ll discover the funny yet revealing combination of superb art and envelope-pushing content in one of the most unique strips ever.

The Boondocks information Excerpted from an interview of Aaron McGruder by Keith Phipps for The Onion

Since the mid-’90s discontinuation of The Far Side, Outland, and Calvin And Hobbes (themselves holdovers from the ’80s), the world of comic strips has seemed pretty dull. One person changing that is Aaron McGruder, whose strip The Boondocks made its debut last spring in more than 150 papers, a nearly unprecedented number for a launch.

Set in the suburbs, The Boondocks follows the lives of several children, primarily two brothers transplanted from South Chicago to live with their grandfather. One, Huey Freeman, is a deeply opinionated Afrocentrist; the other, Riley "Escobar" Freeman, is a posturing would-be gangsta.

From his strip’s debut in daily papers, McGruder—whose work had previously appeared in The Source and the college paper of his alma mater, the University of Maryland—already seemed to have hit his stride, finding the right combination of winning characters, effective gags, and storylines that didn’t shy away from racial issues and other political material. This latter facet served as the initial focus of most of the attention directed at The Boondocks (it landed the strip on some papers’ editorial pages), but McGruder hopes, and The Boondocks’ continued quality suggests, that audiences will find more to like. So far, McGruder has taken on everything from the identity problems of biracial children to his disappointment in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, to the hot button issue of lawn-mowing. Currently developing an animated version of The Boondocks with director Reginald Hudlin in addition to turning out his strip, McGruder recently took some time to talk to The Onion.