Background about Dave Coverly
Dave Coverly admits there is
no overriding theme, no tidy little philosophy that precisely
describes what Speed Bump
is about. "Basically," he says, "if life were a
movie, these would be the outtakes."
These
"outtakes" now appear in about 200 newspapers internationally,
including the Washington Post, Toronto Globe & Mail, Chicago
Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Cleveland Plain
Dealer, Irish Times (Dublin), The Observer (London), Cincinnati
Enquirer, Las Vegas Sun, and San Francisco Examiner. In May,
2000, the first Speed
Bump book, "Speed Bump: A Collection of Cartoon Skidmarks",
was released by Andrews McMeel Publishers. In addition, American
Greetings carries a line of Speed
Bump greeting
cards, which won a "Retail Excellence" award in November,
2000.
Coverly
grew up in Plainwell, Michigan, where he began cartooning
as a little kid. He got the cartooning bug after seeing his work
published in the high school paper, and started taking
cartooning seriously in 1986 as an undergraduate student at Eastern
Michigan University, where he penned a comic panel called
"Freen" for the school newspaper.
He also studied in England during this time, and returned to EMU
to receive his bachelor's degree in both philosophy and imaginative
writing in 1987. He continued his cartooning in graduate school
at Indiana University, where his panel won numerous national
awards; he was graduated from IU with a master's in creative writing
in 1992.
While taking some time off from graduate school, Coverly was an
art director for a public relations firm, and an editorial cartoonist
for the Battle Creek Enquirer. In 1990, he returned to Indiana
and became the editorial cartoonist for The Herald-Times in
Bloomington. He also began a freelance career, and his work
subsequently appeared in such publications as Esquire, Saturday
Evening Post, The New York Times, and USA Today. In 1994,
Creators Syndicate picked up his untitled cartoon panel,
helped in choosing the name Speed Bump,
and a year later it was running in nearly 100 papers. Coverly
left The Herald-Times in 1995 to concentrate on his syndicated
work.
In 2003 and 1995, Speed Bump
was given a Reuben Award for Best Newspaper Panel by the
National Cartoonists Society, an award for which it was nominated
again in 1997, 2001, and 2002. In 1998, the same organization
gave him another Reuben Award for Best Greeting Cards,
an award for which his cards were nominated again in 1999.
Coverly now works out of an attic studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan,
with inspiration from his close friend, Cuppa Joe. He is married
to Chris, and they have two
daughters, Alayna and Simone.
Dave's website is speedbump.com.
E-mail Dave Coverly.
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