Marmaduke creator recalls time on D.O. staff, rise to comic-strip royalty

Though nearly every dog owner proclaims their canine to be the most clever and lovable of them all, Brad Anderson has them beat.

Anderson, 90, is the owner — or rather, creator — of Marmaduke, the Great Dane whose troublesome adventures and perceptive nature have been chronicled in newspapers for decades.

“You know what people say, ‘My dog is so smart that if he could talk, he would talk,’” Anderson said. “Well, that’s what Marmaduke does. He lets people know what the problem is in real dog style.”

Anderson said his time at The Daily Orange helped him set up a successful career that includes the 60-year-old comic.

In his first draft of Marmaduke, Anderson said, the dog looked intimidating and “not very pleasant.”

“I couldn’t name him Dennis the Menace, but it was a dog that went down that road,” Anderson said.

A mean dog wouldn’t capture Anderson’s audience, he realized, so he adapted Marmaduke’s personality to the curious, human-like dog known around the world today.

Soon after, Anderson didn’t have to fight for an audience. He received numerous letters from readers every week that described the mischief their dogs got into. He couldn’t keep up with all of them, but shared their stories by creating a series at the end of his comics called “Dog Gone Funny.”

While cartoons tell stories individually, sometimes they serve as an entry point for readers into a larger story, Anderson said. That was something he learned as an illustrator for The Daily Orange in the early 1950s.

While on staff, Anderson drew comics for a weekly piece focused on campus manners. During a characteristically brutal winter, the campus was bombarded with snow, so the university dug one-way trails for students to navigate the campus.

A student wrote about the proper etiquette of stepping to the side to let others pass when walking along the snowy trailways, so Anderson drew a comic showing a student submerged in a snow bank to accompany the story.

Anderson continued working for The Daily Orange and a student literary magazine until he graduated in 1952.

His time at school publications and in the classroom encouraged Anderson to keep cartooning, he said. Drawing was a lifetime hobby and skill that turned into a career. He began as a toddler and, at 15, started selling cartoons to an aviation magazine for $3 each.

Now, Anderson’s comics have an international presence and legacy. They’re syndicated across the United States, as well as England, Scandinavia, Germany and the Middle East.

“We were in Greece and there was even a Marmaduke store. I really fell over when I saw that,” Anderson said.

Anderson is taking steps to ensure his legacy lives on. His son Paul, who lives near him in Montgomery, Texas, became his father’s apprentice three years ago.

But Anderson is still working on Marmaduke himself. He continues to develop layouts and ideas for the comics.

“I guess I’ve been in this field for so long and worked with newspapers for so many years,” Anderson said, “it’s hard to let go.”