Jenny Campbell

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Jenny Campbell is an American cartoonist who draws the cartoon strip Flo & Friends. The comic began in 2002 as a partnership with John Gibel; it is distributed by Creators Syndicate.

[edit] About Jenny Campbell

The concept of syndication has been familiar to Jenny Campbell since her high school days in Phoenix, Ariz. That's when her father, Don G. Campbell, a longtime business writer, got his first syndication deal.

Watching her father work hard instilled in Jenny a love of writing and journalism. Throughout college she worked full time at The Arizona Republic, starting as the paper's first female copyboy. She went on to become a picture editor, occasional feature writer and sometime cartoonist. When she graduated from Arizona State University in 1979 with a BA in journalism, she became a sixth-generation journalist.

After graduation, Jenny moved to California and landed a job at the Pasadena Star-News by posing as an accomplished artist. In addition to being a one-person art department, Jenny also wrote a weekly local column, covered myriad features and worked the Friday night police beat.

In 1985, while working at The Orange County Register as a general assignment entertainment writer, Jenny kept doodling and ended up drawing a weekly cartoon in the Friday entertainment supplement. The cartooning bug had bitten her. She felt as though she was the only writer in the building who secretly longed to win a Caldecott Award rather than a Pulitzer. At age 32, Jenny moved to Philadelphia to live with a friend and start her new career as a cartoonist.

She made $3,000 her first year.

Gradually, her work picked up and she found her niche as a children's illustrator. Today, Jenny runs a thriving cartooning business in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, with two children's books to her credit and a list of clients including the textbook arms of most major publishers and Highlights for Children magazine.

Jenny was approached in 2002 by John Gibel, who had an idea for a comic strip about seniors. But, John confessed, "I'm not funny and I can't draw." Luckily, Jenny filled in where John lacked, and as a team, they created Flo & Friends. Tragically, John died suddenly in early 2005. With his family's blessing, Jenny inherited sole ownership of the strip and has vowed to make it a success in John's honor.

Jenny lives in Ohio in an 1880s farmhouse with three dogs and a cat, and when she's not up all night drawing cartoons, she's on her bicycle or on a tennis court. She dedicates her work to her late father, who had a deep and abiding love of cartoons and cartoonists.