Diamondback doodlers

Sexy college students, talking ducks, awkward college freshmen and black brothers from inner-city Chicago may seem to have little in common, but all of these characters got their start in now-famous cartoons originally featured in The Diamondback.

Though cartoons in newspapers have become routine, cartoons did not debut in The Diamondback until more than 40 years after the newspaper began — in the 1950s — and even then, they were not regularly published strips. The 1990s became a sort of "golden age" in Diamondback comics. At the time, there were three comic strips published daily, which gave rise to well-known comic artists Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid), Frank Cho (Liberty Meadows) and Aaron McGruder (The Boondocks). The cartoons appeared one after the other, building a legacy of clever, well-drawn cartoons in the newspaper that the cartoonists said helped shape their careers.

"The University of Maryland was the ultimate proving ground for cartoonists," Kinney said. "You had a daily paper with a massive audience."

Kinney drew the cartoon Igdoof for about two years during his time at the university, in addition to working as a graphics editor at The Diamondback. Igdoof was a character based on an exaggerated version of freshmen, or what Kinney described as "a freshman suffering from arrested development."

After spending his freshman year at Villanova, Kinney transferred to the university and hoped to get his cartoon into the newspaper. The competition was tough then, and after a few semesters of rejection, Igdoof was finally published.

From there, the cartoon took over his life, Kinney said. He would start working on his comics at 1 a.m. because he couldn't work until all his roommates went to bed. Often he wouldn't finish until 5 or 6 a.m.

"I knew that I was writing for 30,000 people each day, so it became the priority for me," Kinney said. "I put an unhealthy amount of time into the strip."

After graduation, Kinney tried for three years to get Igdoof syndicated before trying a different approach — books. He settled on simpler drawings and created Diary of Wimpy Kid, which follows the misadventures of middle schooler Gregory Heffley. The first book was published in 2007 and now has four installments. The fifth book and a live-action movie are due next year.

Despite all his success, Kinney said it all comes back to The Diamondback.

"I think The Diamondback is probably the best thing that ever happened to me," Kinney said. "I made great friends and got exposure and experience. I have very fond memories of working there."

Cartoonist Cho drew the comic strip University² from 1994 to 1996 — shortly after Kinney's Igdoof. Because Cho attended the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore, he used to drive to College Park twice a week late at night after his nursing classes. At that time Kinney still worked as a late-night production manager at the newspaper. Cho said he would work on his cartoons late into the night.

"It was very low key, and I really didn't know the popularity of the strip at all. At night, no one was around," Cho said.

In 1996, Cho gathered up his comics into a book University²: The Angry Years and printed 2,000 copies of it. The book store at the Stamp Student Union held a book signing for it.

When Cho showed up to find a line stretching around the building, he was shocked.

After graduation, Cho adapted University² into Liberty Meadows — a syndicated strip — and wrote daily from 1997 to 2001.

Cho soon grew tired of the restrictive constraints of newspaper editors, quit his syndicated strip and started writing Liberty Meadows comic books.

"I was constantly fighting with editors every week," Cho said. "There are five topics you can't touch in a family newspaper: sex, religion, drugs, violence and racial issues. I always hit upon those because it's what makes me laugh. That's the big key: Don't write for an audience, just write for yourself."

Soon after, Cho signed a deal with Marvel comics — a dream he harbored since childhood — and has drawn comics for Spider-Man, The Hulk and The Avengers, among others.

Cho is also working with Sony to turn Liberty Meadows into an animated TV show.

"The Diamondback really taught me discipline," Cho said. "A deadline is a deadline — you can't miss it. So it really did kind of prepare me for the daily grind."

Aaron McGruder first published his nationally known comic, The Boondocks, in The Diamondback. The strip follows two black brothers who move from inner-city Chicago to live with their grandfather in the suburbs. The cartoon is known for its commentary on African-American culture, and has even spawned controversy when McGruder criticizes black leaders in the cartoon.

The comic was a nationwide syndicated column, and McGruder has published five books on the characters. The series was made into a TV series that premiered on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in 2005.

After a dry spell following the '90s, many students still at the university think of the comic strip Not From Concentrate as The Diamondback cartoon of this generation.

The cartoon, drawn by Thomas Dobrosielski, ran from the summer of 2006 through the summer of 2008 and most often used stick figures, but was never confined to the same characters. The cartoon featured a host of movie characters, actors and various pop culture references.

Dobrosielski eventually stopped drawing for the daily comic strip because he said he felt he was straining for ideas too often, and opted to focus on other things. But his cast of stick figure characters and penis jokes live on his website, which Dobrosielski hopes he can update more in the future.

"You want them all to be good, but sometimes you don't meet your own standards," Dobrosielski said.

tousignant at umdbk dot com