Aaron McGruider’s comic the Boondocks hit newspapers in 1999 and debuted in over 150 newspapers, the second largest premier in comic history. Mcgruders creation quickly grew in popularity and is now featured in over 300 different publications. The latest addition to his growing number of achievements, the animated “Boondocks” series, is set to premier on Adult Swim and promises to be as edgy and provocative as the original strip. McGruder held a press conference call this past Tuesday, attended by media outfits from across the country, and spoke about the many hardships that constitute the creation and production of your own animated series. “Fortunately,” says McGruder, “I have found enough people who are willing to sacrifice a lot of time, and the show looks really good. Being a cartoonist is an isolated job and most cartoonists are standoffish, isolate people. It has been a dramatic transition to go from being alone to having all of these actors, producers, artists and writers. It’s just a lot to manage.” The original pilot made for Fox was “sitcom-y” and “structured”. He describes it as being “from a storytelling perspective…almost as confining as the strip.” Adult Swim, known for it’s edgy, driven comics is far more comedy oriented and grants McGruder much more creative license. The character voices are done by a number of celebrities including Charlie Murphy of Chapelle’s Show, Ed Asner of Curb Your Enthusiasm, John Witherspoon and Regina King who plays the voice of both the young protagonists on the new show. The series features a handful of star cameo’s as well, including Quincy Jones and Xzibit. The Boondocks comic strip can easily be pidgeone-holed as leftist and myopic, however anyone who watches the new episodes or has followed the cartoon knows McGruders special attention to the obscurity of right and wrong in modern times. The characters represent a plethora of different opinions, true to those of our culture, and succeeds in addressing many of the layered problems in out modern society. The underlying force behind the new show is comedy and McGruder’s daunting sense of humor comes through in the new animated series to a greater degree than in the original comics.