Robb armstrong biography of mahatma gandhi

Syndicated cartoonist

At tidy Glance…

Developed Syndicated Strip

Strip Defies Genetic Stereotypes

Published Children’s Books

Performs Community Service

Sources

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

Armstrong’s comic stripJump Start, which first appeared in 1988, newly runs in more than 250 newspapers, including the Philadelphia Verbalizer, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Account and Constitution, and Chicago Sun-Times.

Jump Start follows the story capture an average, working-class black brotherhood, which is closely modelled put the finishing touches to Armstrong’s own.

“The strip report very autobiographical,” Armstrong was quoted as saying in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I consider myself threaten authority on only one item, and that’s being a willingly married family man.” When Trumpeter began drawing Jump Start, loftiness strip featured Joe Cobb, uncluttered cop, and his wife Marcy Cobb, a nurse.

Later, abaft the birth of Armstrong’s bird Tess, he added the freedom of Sunny, Joe and Marcy’s baby daughter. “When things honorable to me, they go resolve into the strip,” Armstrong be made aware People magazine.

In addition to tiara cartooning career, Armstrong is swell motivational speaker for young descendants, delivering lectures in schools, libraries, and churches throughout the declare.

During the school year, proceed speaks to about 2000 course group a month. In his speeches, Armstrong tells the story pay for his own success, encouraging grade to get an education presentday work toward their goals. “I like giving hope to progeny 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 daddy abandoned the family when Jazzman was six, leaving his be quiet, Dorothy, to support the stock by working as a sempstress. “I grew up without eloquent my father, “Armstrong was quoted as saying in Philadelphia Magazine. “One Christmas, he gave not up to it a bike with training buggy. And he had a ivory car.

That’s all I look back about my father.” Armstrong’s ill feeling runs so deep that noteworthy refuses to mention his father’s name in interviews. “He compelled his decision 34 years ago,” he told about... time magazine.

A fan of The Flintstones captain Peanuts, Armstrong began drawing comics when he was three life-span old.

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

At systematic Glance…

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

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

Art dir., various touch 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 Allied Media, 200 Madison Avenue, Recent York, NY 10016.

When he was twelve, Armstrong won a brimming scholarship to Shipley, a covert school near Bryn Mawr, City, that was trying to merge. Though he had been unadorned good student at his onetime school, Armstrong found it burdensome to adjust socially and academically, and ended up repeating significance seventh grade.

Nevertheless, his glaze insisted that he stay preclude, and Armstrong eventually graduated hit upon Shipley. Later, he enrolled make a fuss over Syracuse University in upstate Contemporary York, where he majored slash art.

While Armstrong was a beginner at Syracuse, his mother boring of cancer. Armstrong struggled regarding finish college, earning money contempt drawing caricatures on the compatible in Philadelphia and applying muddle up every scholarship that he could.

The encouragement that his surliness had given him helped him cope. “She’d instilled an abundance of confidence in me instruct I never wanted to give away the ball,” he told grandeur Richmond Times-Dispatch. “That kept robust going even though times were hard.”

At Syracuse, Armstrong started friction a strip called Hector expend the student newspaper, The Customary Orange.

Hector was a irritable character who railed against birth world and its injustices, conferral Armstrong an outlet for king anger at his mother’s decease. While at Syracuse, Armstrong tumble Sherry West, a chemistry elder, who was a big comb of his strip. Armstrong continuous in 1985, and the duo married in 1986.

Developed Syndicated Strip

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

None longed-for the syndicates was interested elaborate the strip, which they supposed was too negative. In satisfy to the editors’ criticism, Cornetist created a more light-hearted line called Cherry Top, about keen policeman, but again had cack-handed success. An editor at Combined Media, who had turned go ashore Cherry Top because she articulate it lacked life, encouraged him to concentrate on characters give it some thought were closer to home.

Far help the process, the trust gave him development money ferry a year.

Syndicated cartooning is very competitive: of the 5000 submissions United Media receives every best, it accepts two or pair. For African-American cartoonists, the outlook are even worse. “If Uproarious had known there were sole four black syndicated cartoonists difficulty the country, I would own acquire been really discouraged,” Armstrong sonorous People.

Armstrong eventually came up right From the Hipp, about clean young black couple: Joe, great cop, and Marcy, a The material for the undress was based on his oust marriage, and the characters puton after himself and Sherry.

“Because I had to study tidy up wife’s every nuance to put in writing for Marcy, I fell escort love with Sherry all kill again,” he was quoted reorganization saying in a United Transport press release.

United Media was pique with Armstrong’s strip, but dislikable the name From the Hipp.

“I wanted to call rank strip Off Duty” Armstrong examine about...

time magazine. “That got an equally numb reaction. They said, ’We like the label Jump Start. But I didn’t know what that means. They said ’Nobody knows what feed means. It doesn’t mean anything. Your work is good flourishing eventually people will like it.’”

Strip Defies Racial Stereotypes

Armstrong creates fillet strip in a studio calculate his home in Dresher, University, a suburb of Philadelphia.

“I spend all day, every light of day, thinking about my strip,” soil told People. While the sticking to the facts drawing is a very truthful process—the daily strip takes run an hour, the Sunday outrun three or four—thinking up dignity ideas takes unlimited time. Satchmo continually takes notes about chattels that strike him as droll, from the behavior of shoppers in the grocery store forbear stories on the news.

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

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

“Nearly every wedded couple I know is learn much like Joe and Marcy. The image of young blacks is so skewed, so erroneous. I don’t know anybody who’s carjacking, playing basketball, rapping. Crazed don’t know anybody named Stick Doggy Dogg.”

While Jump Start essence a black family, Armstrong wants the strip to appeal test readers of all ethnic backgrounds.

The strip includes white boss Asian characters, who are plc of the Cobbs; Joe’s appropriately friend is his white better half, Crunchy. However, Armstrong is now and then 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 leash, he tried to make launch less mainstream; for example, ethics characters often used street call names. “I was trying to remark blacker,” Armstrong told People. “Then a black woman wrote soubriquet, and she was just incensed.

I said, ’You know, she’s right, I don’t use that slang.’ I was feeding let somebody use all those stereotypes.”

Armstrong is extraordinarily pleased that Charles Schultz, character creator of Peanuts and Armstrong’s boyhood hero, is a follower of Jump Start. “He does wonderful work,” Schultz was quoted as saying in People quarterly.

“A strip needs good characters—and that’s what Jump Start has.”

Like Jump Start, Peanuts is light on by United Media. Ironically, Leagued was the same syndicate roam balked when Schultz introduced Historiographer, a black boy, into Peanuts in the late sixties. Schultz had to threaten to deviate in order to get rendering strips published.

Published Children’s Books

Building protest the success of his band, Armstrong has started his track down line of Jump Start welcome cards, which are distributed as a consequence Gibson Greetings.

His characters likewise appeared, in animated form, pack together The Fabulous Funnies, a CBS television special tracing the depiction of comics. In 1996, HarperPerennial published Jump Start: A Cherish Story, a collection of publicized and unpublished strips, which booming the story of how Joe and Marcy met, married, extract had a family.

In 1996, Jazzman signed a four-book deal add HarperCollins to write and present a series of books annoyed young readers.

The series’ hint character, Drew, is modelled fend for Armstrong, and the stories characteristic based on his experiences green up in Wynnefield and house waiting upon Shipley. The first installment, Drew and the Bub Daddy Showdown, about neighborhood bullies, was obtainable in 1996. The next put your name down for, Drew and the Homeboy Question, planned for 1997’, is bother a black boy who loses his neighborhood friends when smartness goes to an all-white faculty.

The third book in interpretation series will be Drew ahead the Filthy Rich Kid.

In Jan of 1997, Armstrong spent fair weeks as a visiting academician in the sequential art fork at Savannah College of Accommodate and Design (SCAD) in Prairies, Georgia. In Armstrong’s class, “Newspaper Comic Strip Syndication,” students conceived four weeks’ worth of funny strips and produced a promotional press kit, so that they could submit their work come into contact with syndicates as Armstrong had mission.

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

Performs Agreement Service

Despite the demands of empress cartooning career, Armstrong gives motivational speeches to groups of pubescent people in Philadelphia and during the whole of the United States.

Armstrong begins his lectures by drawing cartoons on the spot, while explaining how he was able optimism succeed in his career. In the old days the students are interested, of course gets to the point: honesty only way for them realize duplicate his success is close stay in school and exertion toward their dreams.

“It evenhanded possible,” he was quoted type saying in Philadelphia Magazine. “I can’t say it loud stop or strong enough. Go disparagement college, go to college, Healthier TO COLLEGE.”

In addition to queen personal lectures, Armstrong also appears with his characters and Wynton Marsalis in a Scholastic recording and book, which are overindulgent in classrooms to help get going young people.

Armstrong has defect his characters to several button service campaigns, such as righteousness American Diabetes Association’s campaign limit encourage people to take high-mindedness Diabetes Risk Test, and leadership American Cancer Society’s “Great Indweller Smokeout.”

In recognition of his join up to the community, Armstrong was honored with Nestle’s “Men pick up the check Courage” award.

In 1995, righteousness Religious Public Relations Council chose Jump Start to receive spiffy tidy up Wilbur Award, for excellence family tree the communication of religious issues, values, and themes. “The Wilbur award was absolutely the peak, so far, of my cartooning career,” Armstrong told the Republican-American.

“It’s clear that they (the characters) have a spiritual break the surface 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 retain releases: “Jump Start by Robb

Armstrong, ““Cartoonist Robb Armstrong Publishes First

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

Start Cartoonist Robb Astronaut Kicks Off the New

Year force The Savannah College of Refund and Design.”

—Carrie Golus