Kathleen Andrews Dies at 84; Helped Give Ziggy and Others Their Start

The pop was Jim Andrews, her husband, who, with his best friend, John P. McMeel, concocted a newspaper syndication company from the basement of the Andrewses’ rented ranch house. Ms. Andrews, who had a master’s degree in mathematics, kept the books. They called it Universal Press Syndicate because, Mr. Trudeau said, “it sounded bland and boring and like it had been around for a hundred years. I thought it sounded like James Bond’s cover.”

They had a mail drop with a Fifth Avenue address in New York City (Mr. McMeel and his wife, Susan, lived in a walk-up nearby). Mr. Andrews gave himself a pseudonym, John Kennedy (for his hero), and it was “Mr. Kennedy” who wrote to Mr. Trudeau while he was a junior at Yale and writing a comic strip called “Bull Tales,” about a college quarterback, for the Yale Daily News.

“He wrote and asked if I was interested in a career as a syndicated cartoonist,” Mr. Trudeau said, “basically offering me the job I still hold and with me literally paying no dues whatsoever. I signed with the total absence of the technical skills traditionally associated with the craft.”

“Bull Tales” became “Doonesbury,” which first appeared in newspapers in 1970 — marking the debut of Universal Press Syndicate as a proper company — and won Mr. Trudeau a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. It was the first comic strip to earn the award. (The central character of “Bull Tales,” who became part of the ensemble cast of “Doonesbury,” was the regressive but sympathetic B.D.) In 1971, Ziggy made his dolorous appearance.

Eventually, the company moved out of the Andrews family house and into actual offices in Prairie Village, Kan. Mr. Andrews and Mr. McMeel began scooping up writers like Seymour Hersh — they syndicated the rights to “Cover-Up,” his 1972 book about his coverage of the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam — as well as cartoonists like Ms. Guisewite.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/business/media/kathleen-andrews-dead.html