Aaron McGruder

An unlikely firestorm was ignited on the 19th of April, 1999. The Universal Press Syndicate made the largest launch ever of a single comic strip in the history of the printed page when it debuted an off-beat work in more than 160 newspapers that day (and 40 more by year's end). The strip, centering on two prepubescent Black youths transplanted from the inner-city of South Chicago to the lily-white fictional suburb of Woodcrest, immediately set off controversy with its daily skewerings of race, politics, music and every other slice of Americana considered taboo to the "funnies". And yet both the success and controversy of the comic happened so fast that few knew about the man behind it all. The strip is "The Boondocks", brainchild of Aaron McGruder. Born in Chicaco, Illinois in 1974 under the sign of Gemini, Aaron and his parents soon moved to from their largely-Black neighbourhood to a mostly-white suburb in Baltimore, Maryland when Aaron was about to start school. Spending the majori