The Boondocks

Aaron McGruder is the creator of one the most thought provoking comic strips around: The Boondocks. The comic itself was started when McGruder was an undergrad at the University of Maryland. It quickly gained popularity and eventually ran in syndication in several newspapers. The comic strip turned television show features the daily adventures of brothers Riley and Huey, kids who talk as if they are 20 or so years older than 8 and 10 years old. The brothers live with Granddad, have neighbors Tom and Sarah and their daughter Jazmine, Uncle Ruckus and others.

McGruder uses the strip in a comical way to talk about serious issues, namely racism, prejudice and the everyday life of its characters of which most are black. Huey (named after Black Panther Huey Newton and his little brother Riley) regularly cuss and spit knowledge that often takes Granddad for a surprise. They are also knowledgeable of how their society works relative to skin color and find themselves in some ridiculous problem trying to solve it.


The show version of the comic is drawn in anime/manga-style and sent to a studio in South Korea for its final phase of development. When it was created, The Boondocks was the only anime-style show to feature a predominantly black cast, voice actors included. Characters drawn in anime or manga style usually have exaggerated features, and the term “anime” itself has come to mean animation in Japanese. 


The comic is now in its last season which begins in May, meaning with it goes the first (okay, one of the first) black anime/manga show to become widely popular. In honor of its retirement, here's a video clip of one of the episodes: