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While following another column in the Yale Daily News, co-founder Jim Andrews noticed Bull Tales, a comic strip created by an unknown student named Garry Trudeau. For more than a year, Andrews worked with the young cartoonist to refine the strip. On October 26, 1970, Doonesbury debuted as our first comic strip, and Universal Press Syndicate began to make its presence known. Five years later, Trudeau won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning and became the first comic strip artist to win such an honor.
More than four decades later, Doonesbury remains a staple in more than 800 Sunday newspapers in the U.S. and abroad, and is a popular feature on GoComics. Doonesbury has been collected in 60 hardcover, trade paperback and mass-market editions, which have cumulatively sold more than 7 million copies worldwide, including the most recent New York Times bestseller, #SAD! Doonesbury in the Time of Trump (2018). As America’s premier social and political commentator, Trudeau remains without peer.
It is hard to envision a world without Calvin and Hobbes (and it would be a dismal one indeed!) Although it has been more than 30 years since Calvin and his trusty sidekick, Hobbes, first captured the imaginations of millions of fans, the transcendent humor, luminous charm and inspired adventures of the most beloved comic strip pair of all time endures in what The Wall Street Journal calls “America’s Most Profound Comic Strip.”
It all started when Phoebe skipped a rock across a pond and accidentally hit a dazzling but self-absorbed unicorn named Marigold Heavenly Nostrils. One wish turned Marigold into Phoebe’s obligational best friend, but can a vain mythical beast and a 9-year-old daydreamer really forge a connection? Absolutely! Dana Simpson’s hilarious and heartwarming tales of friendship remind us that even when life isn’t all rainbows and glitter, we can find magic in any moment.
Simpson, the winner of the Amazon Comic Strip Superstar contest co-sponsored by AMU, worked with editors for more than two years to develop Phoebe and Her Unicorn before the strip debuted in more than 100 newspapers in 2015, one of the largest initial launches of a feature in Andrews McMeel Syndication history. That number has steadily grown, alongside over 12,000 followers on GoComics, AMU’s digital hub for comics.
Phoebe and Her Unicorn has become a household name within children’s publishing. This bestselling series includes nine comic collections, an activity book and a board book with more to come. The series has won multiple awards and has been translated into nine languages, selling over a half-million copies internationally and making the world a little more magical.
Following its tradition of recognizing new talent and anticipating trends reflective of the zeitgeist, Andrews McMeel published Toronto-based poet Rupi Kaur’s transformative work, milk and honey, in 2015. Since its release, milk and honey has garnered international acclaim, as Rupi’s message of survival, love, abuse, loss, healing and femininity resonates with millions of readers throughout the world. Her unyielding and distinctive voice guides readers on a journey to healing and hope, celebrating their inner strength and resilience.
milk and honey is a #1 New York Times best-seller that has remained on the list for more than three years. It has also been translated into 40+ languages. Rupi’s second collection of poems and illustrations, the sun and her flowers, was published by AMU in the fall of 2017 and debuted as a #1 global bestseller.
Rupi began writing milk and honey while still in high school, and self-published it when she was 22 years old. Now with more than 4.5 million copies sold, its first print run was 10,000 copies.