The Boondocks (comic strip)

The Boondocks
Boondocks cast. Clockwise from top: Huey Freeman, Michael Caesar, Hiro Otomo, Riley Freeman, Cindy McPhearson and Jazmine DuBois
Author(s)	Aaron McGruder
Current status / schedule	Ended
Launch date	April 19, 1996
End date	March 26, 2006
Syndicate(s)	Universal Press
Genre(s)	Satire

The Boondocks was a daily syndicated comic strip written and originally drawn by Aaron McGruder that ran from 1996 to 2006. Created by McGruder in 1996 for Hitlist.com, an early online music website, it was printed in the monthly hip hop magazine The Source in 1997. As it gained popularity, the comic strip was picked up by the Universal Press Syndicate and made its national debut on April 19, 1999. A popular and controversial strip, The Boondocks satirizes African American culture and American politics as seen through the eyes of young, black radical Huey Freeman. McGruder's syndicate said it was among the biggest launches the company ever had.

McGruder sold the television and film rights for the strip to Sony Pictures Entertainment. The Boondocks animated TV series premiered on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block on November 6, 2005. McGruder launched an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign for a live action movie featuring the Boondocks character Uncle Ruckus in 2013.

The strip debuted on Hitlist.com on February 8, 1996. It later appeared in The Diamondback under editor Jayson Blair on December 3, 1996, paying McGruder $30 per strip—$17 more than other cartoonists. McGruder ended the strip's run in The Diamondback on March 18, 1997, two weeks after the strip was omitted due to a technical error and a Diamondback staffer printed the word "OOPS" in its place without an explanation. He pulled the strip after the paper refused to run an apology. (Upon the revelation in 2004 of news article fabrications by Blair, by then a reporter for The New York Times, McGruder's comic strip joined others in lampooning Blair.)