Rick Kirkman
"I was born a poor cartoonist in a log cabin drawn in poor perspective." So says Rick Kirkman, co-creator of Baby Blues.

Kirkman began cartooning while in kindergarten. His professional career began when he was in junior high school and drew a parody of Mad magazine. Since he had only one copy, he charged his friends to read it. That is, until their parents found out.

His career has included studio drawing for the Yellow Pages directories and an advertising agency, as well as freelance design and illustration. Along the way, he says, he got "sucked into the world of freelance gag cartooning for magazines," selling often enough to major magazines to keep him hooked.

He met Jerry Scott during his gag cartoon phase more than 20 years ago, and they became friends and, eventually, working partners. After a brief and somewhat unsuccessful foray into syndication with Scott, Kirkman returned to gag cartooning and advertising. He became a freelance humor illustrator in 1982.

In 1987, Kirkman and Scott were on the road to syndication again after Kirkman’s wife had their second child. Kirkman says the conceptual work on the new comic strip was a cathartic experience for him. And so, Baby Blues was born.

Baby Blues was first released by Creators Syndicate on Jan. 7, 1990. King Features Syndicate now distributes the daily strip to nearly 1,000 newspapers in 28 countries and 13 languages. Baby Blues was awarded the National Cartoonists Society's Best Newspaper Comic Strip award in 1995. There are 23 Baby Blues books in print.

In its 10th year, Baby Blues expanded into broadcast media, with a successful animated prime time comedy on The WB television network.

Kirkman lives in Arizona with his wife and two children.

Jerry Scott
Jerry Scott started cartooning professionally in the mid-1970s by submitting gag cartoons to magazines. He sold one out of his first batch to the Saturday Evening Post.

In 1983, he was asked to take over the Nancy comic strip, which he continued to create for 12 years.

In 1988, he got together with longtime friend Rick Kirkman and started kicking around ideas for a new strip. The result was Baby Blues.

Baby Blues was first released by Creators Syndicate on Jan. 7, 1990. King Features Syndicate now distributes the daily strip to nearly 1,000 newspapers in 28 countries and 13 languages. There are 23 Baby Blues books in print. The strip marked its fifth anniversary with the National Cartoonists Society’s Best New Comic Strip award in 1995. In its 10th year, Baby Blues expanded into broadcast media, with a successful animated prime time comedy on The WB television network.

Scott created Zits in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman. Zits made its debut in July 1997 in more than 200 newspapers -- one of the strongest comic-strip introductions in years. King Features now distributes Zits to over 1,500 newspapers.

There are 14 Zits comic-strip anthologies and color treasuries. Zits garnered the top prize in the Newspaper Comic Strip category for two consecutive years (1998 and 1999) and in July of 2000 was awarded the Max and Moritz medal for Best International Comic Strip.

In 2002, Scott was honored for his work on Nancy, Baby Blues and Zits by the Swedish Academy of Comic Art as "Best International Comic-Strip Cartoonist." The Academy's prestigious Adamson Statuette was presented at ceremonies during the Gothenburg Book Fair, the annual publishing trade show held each year in Sweden.

Scott was born in South Bend, Ind. He, his wife, Kim, and their two daughters now live in California.