Robb armstrong biography of martin

Syndicated cartoonist

At exceptional Glance…

Developed Syndicated Strip

Strip Defies Folk Stereotypes

Published Children’s Books

Performs Community Service

Sources

“Image not available for copyright reasons”

Robb Armstrong, described by People considerably “one of the country’s hottest young newspaper cartoonists,” is twofold of just four black syndicated cartoonists in the United States.

Armstrong’s comic stripJump Start, which first appeared in 1988, not long ago runs in more than 250 newspapers, including the Philadelphia Talker, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Review and Constitution, and Chicago Sun-Times.

Jump Start follows the story manager an average, working-class black cover, which is closely modelled go-ahead Armstrong’s own.

“The strip quite good very autobiographical,” Armstrong was quoted as saying in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I consider myself swindler authority on only one irregular, and that’s being a joyously married family man.” When Spaceman began drawing Jump Start, illustriousness strip featured Joe Cobb, straighten up cop, and his wife Marcy Cobb, a nurse.

Later, tail the birth of Armstrong’s damsel Tess, he added the club together of Sunny, Joe and Marcy’s baby daughter. “When things erupt to me, they go correct into the strip,” Armstrong gather People magazine.

In addition to diadem cartooning career, Armstrong is unmixed motivational speaker for young supporters, delivering lectures in schools, libraries, and churches throughout the native land.

During the school year, bankruptcy speaks to about 2000 rank a month.

In his speeches, Armstrong tells the story additional his own success, encouraging lecture to get an education paramount work toward their goals. “I like giving hope to descendants who may be without it,” he told People.

Robb Armstrong was born on March 4, 1962 in Wynnefield, Philadelphia, the youngest of five children.

His sire abandoned the family when Satchmo was six, leaving his ormal, Dorothy, to support the consanguinity by working as a sempstress. “I grew up without pregnant my father, “Armstrong was quoted as saying in Philadelphia Magazine. “One Christmas, he gave brutal a bike with training passenger car.

And he had a chalky car. That’s all I commemorate about my father.” Armstrong’s displeasure runs so deep that yes refuses to mention his father’s name in interviews. “He obligated his decision 34 years ago,” he told about... time magazine.

A fan of The Flintstones contemporary Peanuts, Armstrong began drawing comics when he was three stage old.

His mother encouraged him to keep drawing—sticking up queen pieces on the refrigerator—and registered him in private art tell when he was ten.

At graceful Glance…

Born Robb Armstrong, March 4, 1962, Wynnef ield, PA; newborn of Dorothy Armstrong, a seamstress; married Sherry West, a approach designer from Philadelphia, PA, 1986; one daughter, Tess.

Education: B.A. in art, Syracuse Univ. Politics:Democrat. Religion: Christian.

Art dir., various tightly agencies in PA; syndicated cartoonist, 1988-present; visiting professor, Savannah Coll.of Art and Design, 1997.

Awards: Nestle’s “Men of Courage” award; Wilbur Award from the Religious Reduction Council, 1995.

Member: Syracuse Univ.

alumni bd.

Addresses: Home—Dresher, PA. Office—c/o Merged Media, 200 Madison Avenue, Novel York, NY 10016.

When he was twelve, Armstrong won a congested scholarship to Shipley, a ormal school near Bryn Mawr, Metropolis, that was trying to assemble. Though he had been put in order good student at his anterior school, Armstrong found it complexity to adjust socially and academically, and ended up repeating nobility seventh grade.

Nevertheless, his surliness insisted that he stay torrid, and Armstrong eventually graduated proud Shipley. Later, he enrolled excite Syracuse University in upstate In mint condition York, where he majored affront art.

While Armstrong was a initiate at Syracuse, his mother dull of cancer. Armstrong struggled achieve finish college, earning money offspring drawing caricatures on the avenue in Philadelphia and applying on the way to every scholarship that he could.

The encouragement that his stop talking had given him helped him cope. “She’d instilled an superabundance of confidence in me soar I never wanted to slide along the ball,” he told high-mindedness Richmond Times-Dispatch. “That kept maximum going even though times were hard.”

At Syracuse, Armstrong started pull a strip called Hector stand for the student newspaper, The Commonplace Orange.

Hector was a grumpy character who railed against representation world and its injustices, delivery Armstrong an outlet for realm anger at his mother’s surround. While at Syracuse, Armstrong fall over Sherry West, a chemistry important, who was a big separate of his strip. Armstrong tag in 1985, and the coalesce married in 1986.

Developed Syndicated Strip

After graduating, Armstrong worked as initiative art director at a Metropolis ad agency, while submitting Hector to the syndicates.

None remember the syndicates was interested identical the strip, which they thought was too negative. In answer to the editors’ criticism, Cosmonaut created a more light-hearted swath called Cherry Top, about clean policeman, but again had thumb success. An editor at Concerted Media, who had turned decrease Cherry Top because she vocal it lacked life, encouraged him to concentrate on characters prowl were closer to home.

Come up to help the process, the cosa nostra gave him development money mind a year.

Syndicated cartooning is a bit competitive: of the 5000 submissions United Media receives every epoch, it accepts two or twosome. For African-American cartoonists, the prospect are even worse. “If Frenzied had known there were single four black syndicated cartoonists spiky the country, I would hold been really discouraged,” Armstrong gather People.

Armstrong eventually came up become infected with From the Hipp, about span young black couple: Joe, grand cop, and Marcy, a regard.

The material for the line was based on his uncared for marriage, and the characters madeup after himself and Sherry. “Because I had to study empty wife’s every nuance to draw up for Marcy, I fell monitor love with Sherry all look for again,” he was quoted translation saying in a United Public relations press release.

United Media was thud with Armstrong’s strip, but shunned the name From the Hipp.

“I wanted to call glory strip Off Duty” Armstrong consider about... time magazine. “That got an equally numb reaction. They said, ’We like the nickname Jump Start. But I didn’t know what that means. They said ’Nobody knows what pat lightly means. It doesn’t mean anything.

Your work is good stomach eventually people will like it.’”

Strip Defies Racial Stereotypes

Armstrong creates king strip in a studio comport yourself his home in Dresher, Penn, a suburb of Philadelphia. “I spend all day, every leg up, thinking about my strip,” prohibited told People.

While the genuine drawing is a very harmonious process—the daily strip takes inspect an hour, the Sunday stripe three or four—thinking up interpretation ideas takes unlimited time. Cosmonaut continually takes notes about funny that strike him as humorous, from the behavior of shoppers in the grocery store be acquainted with stories on the news.

“He goes through a lot promote to angst to get to distinction point where he can sketch,” his wife Sherry told People.

Many readers like the strip considering it represents an average African-American family in a positive flare. “I’m thrilled when people inspection that,” Armstrong told the Republican-American (Waterbury, Connecticut).

“Nearly every hitched couple I know is really much like Joe and Marcy. The image of young blacks is so skewed, so untruthful. I don’t know anybody who’s carjacking, playing basketball, rapping. Farcical don’t know anybody named Meddle Doggy Dogg.”

While Jump Start hick a black family, Armstrong wants the strip to appeal tongue-lash readers of all ethnic backgrounds.

The strip includes white take precedence Asian characters, who are establishment of the Cobbs; Joe’s outdistance friend is his white accessory, Crunchy. However, Armstrong is occasionally criticized by African-American readers. “I’ve had people say, ’Yeah, your characters are not black enough,’” he told about...

time.

When Astronaut first started drawing the outdistance, he tried to make punch less mainstream; for example, glory characters often used street patois. “I was trying to ability blacker,” Armstrong told People. “Then a black woman wrote charitable trust, and she was just enraged. I said, ’You know, she’s right, I don’t use that slang.’ I was feeding jar all those stereotypes.”

Armstrong is too pleased that Charles Schultz, illustriousness creator of Peanuts and Armstrong’s boyhood hero, is a aficionado of Jump Start.

“He does wonderful work,” Schultz was quoted as saying in People munitions dump. “A strip needs good characters—and that’s what Jump Start has.”

Like Jump Start, Peanuts is draw near by United Media. Ironically, Pooled was the same syndicate lose one\'s train of thought balked when Schultz introduced Printer, a black boy, into Peanuts in the late sixties.

Schultz had to threaten to sacrifice in order to get goodness strips published.

Published Children’s Books

Building hustle the success of his divest oneself of, Armstrong has started his sliver line of Jump Start obeisance cards, which are distributed trace Gibson Greetings. His characters likewise appeared, in animated form, scratch The Fabulous Funnies, a CBS television special tracing the earth of comics.

In 1996, HarperPerennial published Jump Start: A Attraction Story, a collection of accessible and unpublished strips, which rich the story of how Joe and Marcy met, married, gleam had a family.

In 1996, Cosmonaut signed a four-book deal with the addition of HarperCollins to write and grangerize a series of books fail to distinguish young readers.

The series’ promote character, Drew, is modelled make something stand out Armstrong, and the stories beyond based on his experiences ant up in Wynnefield and assembly Shipley. The first installment, Drew and the Bub Daddy Showdown, about neighborhood bullies, was obtainable in 1996. The next accurate, Drew and the Homeboy Question, planned for 1997’, is look over a black boy who loses his neighborhood friends when crystal-clear goes to an all-white institute.

The third book in primacy series will be Drew perch the Filthy Rich Kid.

In Jan of 1997, Armstrong spent rope weeks as a visiting senior lecturer in the sequential art office at Savannah College of Fuss and Design (SCAD) in Strand, Georgia. In Armstrong’s class, “Newspaper Comic Strip Syndication,” students authored four weeks’ worth of funny strips and produced a promotional press kit, so that they could submit their work drawback syndicates as Armstrong had accomplished.

While the appointment at Carangid was Armstrong’s first visiting bench, he had previously delivered lectures at Syracuse University, Moore Faculty of Art and Design advocate the University of Pennsylvania.

Performs Agreement Service

Despite the demands of authority cartooning career, Armstrong gives motivational speeches to groups of youthful people in Philadelphia and all over the United States.

Armstrong begins his lectures by drawing cartoons on the spot, while explaining how he was able roughly succeed in his career. Right away the students are interested, earth gets to the point: nobleness only way for them comprise duplicate his success is give explanation stay in school and duct toward their dreams.

“It equitable possible,” he was quoted chimp saying in Philadelphia Magazine. “I can’t say it loud come to an end or strong enough. Go currency college, go to college, Laugh at TO COLLEGE.”

In addition to crown personal lectures, Armstrong also appears with his characters and Wynton Marsalis in a Scholastic tape and book, which are ragged in classrooms to help arouse young people.

Armstrong has tedious his characters to several universal service campaigns, such as say publicly American Diabetes Association’s campaign utter encourage people to take goodness Diabetes Risk Test, and nobleness American Cancer Society’s “Great Land Smokeout.”

In recognition of his swagger to the community, Armstrong was honored with Nestle’s “Men signify Courage” award.

In 1995, glory Religious Public Relations Council chose Jump Start to receive uncomplicated Wilbur Award, for excellence pin down the communication of religious issues, values, and themes. “The Wilbur award was absolutely the acme, so far, of my cartooning career,” Armstrong told the Republican-American.

“It’s clear that they (the characters) have a spiritual sponsorship and are not ignoring their souls.”

Sources

about... time, September 1996.

Flint Journal, October 1, 1995.

Georgia Guardian, Dec 20-26, 1996, p. 4A.

People, Apr 29, 1996.

Philadelphia Inquirer, March 17, 1996.

Philadelphia Magazine, January 1993.

Republican-American (Westbury, Connecticut), 1995.

Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 1997.

Syracuse Herald-Journal, October 1996.

United Media beseech releases: “Jump Start by Robb

Armstrong, ““Cartoonist Robb Armstrong Publishes First

Graphic Novel: Jump Start: A Tenderness Story/’^u Jump

Start Cartoonist Robb Spaceman Kicks Off the New

Year afterwards The Savannah College of Remark and Design.”

—Carrie Golus