Jerry Scott: the comics page

Born 2 May 1955, South Bend · two strips in a thousand newspapers each

The tie: Jerry Scott was born in South Bend on May 2, 1955, and was introduced to the newspaper business delivering the South Bend Tribune from his bicycle, in King Features' biography of him. The strips are written and drawn from California today; the start is this city's, and the start is what the record claims.

The record: Scott writes both of his strips and draws one of them. He took over Nancy in 1983 and wrote and drew it into the mid-1990s. With Rick Kirkman he created Baby Blues — Kirkman draws, Scott writes. With Jim Borgman he created Zits, which debuted in July 1997 — Borgman draws, Scott writes. King Features records the standing that makes him the city's print comedy of national reach: Scott is one of only four cartoonists in history to have two strips each carried in more than a thousand newspapers. The Pulitzer Prize on the Zits masthead is Borgman's, won for Cincinnati editorial cartoons — the awards record of this history has dispelled the attribution confusion, and it does not attach to Scott; the writing is his. In March 2026 Scott announced the end of both strips, Baby Blues closing in March 2027; the announcement is carried in the today and authors records, and the strips' end, when it lands, closes a forty-year run that began with a paper route on a South Bend street.

Sources

1. King Features, biography of Jerry Scott — the South Bend birth, the Tribune paper route, the Nancy tenure, the Baby Blues and Zits partnerships, and the four-cartoonists standing.
2. The Scott record in this history and the awards record — the bibliography, Borgman's Pulitzer and the dispelled confusion, the March 2026 announcement.