Books
Huey Freeman rises from 'The Boondocks' to the mainstream

By Tyrone Beason
Seattle Times staff reporter

	UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE Aaron McGruder, the creator of "The Boondocks," knows he can't make everyone happy with his controversial comic strip.
	E-mail this article Print this article Search archive

Huey Freeman has a bone to pick with you.

Actually, the pint-size, black-revolutionary main character in the satirical comic strip "The Boondocks" has a bone to pick with nearly everyone.

And so, it seems, does the strip's 29-year-old creator, Aaron McGruder.

Ever since McGruder launched "The Boondocks" in 1999, his pre-pubescent Huey has been slaying icons and telling it like it is when he senses stupidity and hypocrisy in government, mainstream culture, the media and especially black movies and music.

"I'm somewhere in that humorous, talking-head world" alongside liberal commentators Al Franken and Michael Moore, McGruder said by telephone from Los Angeles, where he lives. "There's a place for somebody young and black to be engaging. It's not my main job, but it's there."

McGruder cancels Aaron McGruder, creator of the comic strip "The Boondocks," was to speak tomorrow at Shoreline Community College. He canceled, his publicist said, because of scheduling conflicts and is trying to replan the appearance. Questions about ticket refunds should go to the community college at 206-546-4606.

McGruder may consider himself a comic-strip creator first, but his controversial work has turned him into both political lightning rod and intellectual heavyweight.

The Nation magazine ran a cover story on "The Boondocks" last year under the headline, "Huey Freeman: American Hero."

More than 250 publications run "The Boondocks," which features two hip-hop-immersed black kids from Chicago whose wise-cracking grandfather moves them "halfway across the country" to the city's suburbs, where the air is clean and where there are no subway stops or rib shacks.

McGruder's book, "A Right to be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury" (Three Penny Press, $16.95), debuted Oct. 1 and is already in its third printing, said his spokeswoman, Chrisette Hudlin.

He created the strip seven years ago while studying at the University of Maryland, in his home state. The Source, a hip-hop magazine, ran the strip briefly before Universal Press Syndicate picked it up 4-½ years ago. The strip runs in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The main child characters are Huey, his brother Riley and friends Caesar and Jazmine, a girl who's biracial status has been an issue in past strips.

Huey and Caesar hang out, playing on the computer and drinking apple juice, but on a dime, they can become articulate well beyond their years.

Equal-opportunity critic

Huey, who has an affinity for the Black Panther Huey P. Newton, is the real piece of work in "The Boondocks."

	The cover of Aaron McGruder's new book, "A Right to be Hostile."

He's an equal-opportunity smarty pants who is just as unhappy with the booty-shaking videos on black cable network BET as he is with the "right-wing propaganda machine."

His list of targets goes on and on: President Bush, hip-hop mogul P. Diddy, actress Vivica A. Fox, former President Reagan, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Rush Limbaugh, TV psychic Ms. Cleo. Even Santa Claus and "Roots" and "Reading Rainbow" star Lavar Burton have fallen victim to Huey's biting remarks.

Critics of "The Boondocks," and there are many, both black and white, liberal and conservative, have said the strip is too mean-spirited to be funny.

McGruder's comics in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks caused a furor. He took the government to task for its handling of the new war on terrorism and challenged the wave of patriotism that accompanied it.

Some newspapers, including Newsday on Long Island and The Daily News in New York, refused to run McGruder's more controversial submissions.

Just last week, The Washington Post sparked cries of censorship from some of its readers when it opted not to run a series of strips about Rice's love life.

The story line shows the kids trying to hook up the famously single, hard-working Rice with a good man who can mellow her out, and thereby save the planet from destruction at her hands.

'Is what it is'

With his picked out hairdo, a turtleneck and eyebrows arched with skepticism and indignation, Huey is almost certainly the alter-ego of his left-wing creator.

"I leave that for the reader to interpret," McGruder said of the strip's true intentions. "It is what it is. My political agendas are not very hard to see."

Huey never smiles. "It's very much by design," said McGruder, who also has an intense, serious persona. "He'll never smile. It's not him." He added: "America has to come to terms with at least one black man who will never smile — just get used to it."

In one series of strips last year, Huey starts work on a book of people he hates, but he wavers on Osama bin Laden, explaining: "He's so EASY to hate. I'm trying to challenge the reader to expand his or her hate horizons."

Lucy from "Peanuts" easily makes it into the book, because of "the whole pulling-the-football-away thing."

Last February, after Rice won an NAACP Image Award, Huey reacted this way in "The Boondocks": "So Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, gave an Image Award to Condoleezza Rice? I wonder if Pat Buchanan is getting a Lifetime Achievement Award?!"

Around the same time, McGruder created a series of strips revolving around the fictitious "Most Embarrassing Black People" awards. Rice's name came up. Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. won. McGruder also won a 2002 Image Award at the same NAACP event, and gave a stern speech questioning the powers that be, only minutes from Rice's gracious on-stage thank-yous. The two were seated close to each other during the taped ceremony.

How did that make the seemingly unflappable McGruder feel?

"Scared to death — just panic," he said. "The national security adviser was sitting three or four seats from me in the front row. It was a stressful situation. But I knew that some statement had to be made."

Focus on TV

McGruder is busy developing a half-hour "Boondocks" pilot for Fox that is expected to air in January 2005, if the network that gave viewers "The Simpsons" likes the show. The strip is also being adapted for a film. To help ease his workload, McGruder has hired artist Jennifer Seng to draw the strip. He still writes the scripts.

"That frees up time for me to focus on the show, which is a good thing," McGruder said. "... Prior to that, the deadlines were incredibly brutal."

Even as "Boondocks" infiltrates the mainstream, McGruder said he doesn't fear the strip will lose its edge. He said he always intended to franchise his creation; now he's well-known enough to branch out on his own terms.

McGruder also insists he doesn't agonize over his critics.

Greg Melvin, Universal Press Syndicate comics editor, says he sometimes has to reign in his star artist by suggesting changes in his work. "He's accommodating — sometimes," Melvin quipped.

It seems "Boondocks" fans should count on the precocious Huey and his sidekicks to keep pushing buttons.

"As for people getting mad and people's silly tantrums, I take no interest. I don't worry about making everyone happy."

Tyrone Beason: 206-464-2251 or tbeason@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company