King Features to Syndicate Shoe Comic Strip

Posted on August 25, 2008

King Features Syndicate will begin distribution of the daily and Sunday Shoe comic strip starting September 1, 2008 for the dailies and September 7, 2008 for the Sundays. The comic has been syndicated internationally since 1977 and now appears in more than 500 newspapers. Most recently, it has been distributed by Tribune Media Services.

Shoe was created by the late editorial cartoonist, Jeff MacNelly, who won three Pulitzer Prizes for editorial cartooning and twice received the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society. The current creative team was handpicked by MacNelly and has continued to produce the famous comic strip for the past 16 years. Editorial cartoonist Chris Cassatt, who was MacNelly's long-time assistant, was one of the country's first digital cartoonists. Editorial cartoonist Gary Brookins trained under MacNelly at the Richmond News-Leader. And MacNelly paid his wife, Susie MacNelly, the ultimate compliment by acknowledging that she was Roz, one of the funniest of his main characters in the strip.

"We are delighted to be syndicating the creation of one of the country's all-time top cartooning talents," said Brendan Burford, King Features comics editor. "Jeff MacNelly was universally loved by his peers in our industry and his comic strip continues to be universally loved by his loyal fans. The creative team behind the strip today has done a magnificent job of keeping the strip fresh, funny and topical, and certainly true to its creator's vision"

Shoe chronicles the daily doings of a group of newspaper employees and their friends, foes and families, all of whom are portrayed as all-too-human birds in the fictional town of Treetops, East Virginia. The strip often pokes fun at various social and political issues of the day. The strip's characters include P. Martin Shoemaker, a cigar-chomping editor nicknamed "Shoe"; Cosmo Fishhawk, an overeducated but underachieving reporter and columnist who writes for The Treetops Tattler-Tribune; Cosmo's nephew, Skyler, who he is raising; and Roz, the wise-cracking waitress at Roz�s Roost, the local diner.