As San Francisco Chronicle readers know, Candorville’s been running in the Sunday paper ever since Opus went to the great children’s book in the sky. The Chronicle ran a survey at the time asking which strip readers wanted as a replacement on Sundays. Candorville won, and the Chronicle mentioned they’d eventually add the weekday version as well. I’m happy to say “eventually” is today.
This is an especially cool addition for me. I lived in the Bay Area for 13 years, and the Chronicle and I have a little history. While I was studying political science at Berkeley, I freelanced editorial cartoons to the Chronicle (as well as the Oakland Tribune, LA Times, & other papers). When their editorial cartoonist took a year-long sabbatical in (I think it was) 2005, the Chronicle’s editorial page filled his space with Candorville strips. Years earlier, the Chronicle’s business section ran Rudy Park Sunday strips. I spent my twenties in the Bay Area. It’s where everything changed for me. I went there a teenager who liked to draw and I left there a 32 year-old teenager who gets paid to draw. Most importantly, I met my wife there; and my best friends, acquaintances, and dentist all live there.
Of course, all this can come crashing down the next time they run a comics page survey and the people I inevitably piss off each send in a dozen letters demanding my head — or it can come crashing down when the newspaper industry evaporates in 2012 (which, obviously, is why the Aztecs ended their calendar in 2012). But for now, this is a great day.
