We all watched raptly and in awe as cartoonist Robb Armstrong drew the famous husband and wife duo and their children from his newspaper comic-strip “JumpStart.”
This occurred about 12 years ago, when my organization invited Armstrong to an event titled “Artists Among Us,” which featured novelists, writers and communicators in the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists and the media at large.
Armstrong was a major talent and was very much celebrated in the media at that time. He lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and he came out to give a presentation on both his comic strip about an African American family and his own life.
I don’t hear as much about Armstrong these days, and I wasn’t even sure if the comic strip was still published in newspapers. But his presumably current anonymity worked to my advantage recently when I came across a signed copy of a “JumpStart” strip from 1991 at auction. I had to sit around – buying things I probably didn’t need – as I waited for the auctioneer to get to the strip, which was on a shelf in the back of the room.
When the framed comic strip finally came up, the auction-house assistant and auctioneer struggled to decipher the name. I sat silently, offering no help at all. Then an auction-goer took a look at it but he couldn’t make out the name, either. Finally, they all gave up and the bidding was on.
As usual, the auctioneer started high with no takers, and then dropped low until he reached a point that was palatable to me but not so low that other buyers might start bidding for the heck of it. I got the strip as the lone bidder.
It was an original drawing with this inscription: “For Sandy With (he drew a heart), Robb Armstrong.” It was dated in blue pencil “29 Dec 91,” and there were blue-pencil layout markings on the strip. It also bore Armstrong’s signature and a United Feature Syndicate Inc. label.
It looked to be ready to go to the printer. The strip told the story of the couple Joe and Marcy on a late-night drive home as the wife slept and the husband dozed off behind the wheel before she opened her eyes and screamed him awake. “JumpStart” is based on the everyday lives of this two-career couple – Joe a police officer and Marcy a nurse – and their family. It has evolved to include more characters, including a dog that texts.
Armstrong comes from a long line of African American cartoonists and comic illustrators – not as a direct relative but in a historical context. I’ve written about several comic-book illustrators as I’ve come across their artwork or references to them at auction.
When Armstrong was the darling of the press, he was one of a number of contemporary African American cartoonists, several of whom were featured in an Ebony magazine roundup in 1993. They included Buck Brown, whose cartoons appeared in Playboy; Brumsic Brandon Jr., who’d been drawing since 1945 and whose daughter Barbara followed in his footsteps with “Where I’m Coming From;” Morrie Turner and his strip “Wee Pals,” which was considered a little too powerful in the age of “Black Power” when first syndicated in the 1960s; Ted Shearer and his “Quincy,” about an inner-city boy, and Ollie Harrington, whose “Bootsie” appeared in the Sengstacke African American newspapers starting in the 1930s.
Most of these folks (except Barbara Brandon) were unfamiliar to me. One who later became very familiar was Aaron McGruder, who first syndicated his in-your-face cartoon “The Boondocks” in 1999.
Armstrong was born in an area of West Philadelphia called Wynnefield in 1962, and started drawing comics when he was about 3 years old. He and his four siblings were raised by their mother Dorothy, a seamstress, who would attach his drawings to the refrigerator. At age 10, she placed him in private art classes.
One of his favorite childhood comic strips was “Peanuts,” whose creator Charles M. Schulz would years later praise his work and become a friend. Armstrong said that as a 3-year-old he would try to draw a Charlie Brown that actually looked like Schulz’s character. He was about 5 or 6 when he came close.
Armstrong won a scholarship to the prestigious and private Shipley School, but struggled in an academic and social environment composed of students who did not look like him. He graduated from Shipley, enrolled at Syracuse University and received a degree in art.
His mother died of cancer while he was in college and he struggled to continue. He succeeded with the help of two families who offered support and by drawing caricatures on the streets of Philadelphia. He also drew a comic strip called “Hector” for the Syracuse student newspaper.
After college, he got a job at an ad agency in Philadelphia, and submitted first “Hector” and several other strips to the syndicates. None were interested, because they felt the strips were too negative or too dull. Finally, one of the editors suggested he write about life as he knew it.
So, he and his wife and their family became the characters of “JumpStart,” a funny and positive take on an African American family whose life was based on his own. It was first syndicated in 1989.
At one point, the strip was carried in more than 400 newspapers, and was said to be the most widely circulated comic strip by an African American cartoonist in recent history. You can also find the strip these days on the web.
“I’m drawing about my life; about a black couple because I’m black,” Armstrong said in an interview in 1996. “Nearly every married couple I know is like Joe and Marcy, my main characters. The image of young blacks is so skewed, so false. I don’t know anybody who’s carjacking, playing basketball, rapping. Joe and Marcy and the characters I’ve developed are deep and based on real life. My first priority is to make my strips funny, interesting.”
Armstrong has written children’s books and cartoons for the New Yorker, and he speaks (and draws to illustrate a point) at schools and other venues. Last year, Fox announced that it was creating a comedy based on his comic strip. McGruder’s strip became an animated version in 2005, shut down and was scheduled to reappear soon.
I didn’t get a chance to buy the Armstrong drawing at my group’s event. Who knew that it would be many years later before I was able to nab one.
