Shoe (comic strip)

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Shoe is the name of a comic strip that was written and drawn by its creator Jeff MacNelly until his death in 2000. It has since been continued by Chris Cassatt, Gary Brookins, and Susie MacNelly.

While not politically oriented in the style of Doonesbury, the strip often pokes fun at various social and political issues of the day, especially when Belfry makes an appearance.

The strip won MacNelly the Reuben Award for the year 1979.

[edit] Characters

Shoe deals with the day-to-day foibles of a group of newspaper employees and their families, all of whom are portrayed as anthropomorphized birds, in the fictional locale of Treetops, East Virginia.

Characters	Species^[1]	Description
P. Martin "Shoe" Shoemaker	purple martin	The cigar-smoking editor (patterned after Jim Shumaker whom MacNelly worked for at the Chapel Hill (NC) Weekly) of The Treetops Tattler-Tribune, whose difficulties with his various ex-wives is legendary. He is the boss of Cosmo & Loon with a very similar management style to Mr. Dithers in the comic series Blondie.
Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk	osprey	The overeducated but underachieving osprey columnist whose computer expertise is almost as poor as his understanding of women. His trademark desk is always overflowing with a very tall stack of papers, extending beyond the frame. Although the title of the strip is Shoe, Cosmo is arguably the main character, as the majority of the strips revolve around his life.
Roz	unknown^[2]	Waitress at the local diner (Roz's Roost) where many of the characters gather
Skyler	skylark	An overeducated but underachieving nephew that Cosmo is raising
Sen. Batson D. Belfry		A beltway blowhard, seemingly patterned after Tip O'Neill and Teddy Kennedy, and whose name is a pun of "bats in the belfry"
Irving "Irv" Seagull	gull	A local repairman.
Loon	loon	A mail and newspaper carrier whose aeronautic skills are the subject of recurring jokes, based on former Vietnam POW Navy Pilot Paul Galanti
Wiz	merlin	The "Merlin of motherboards," he appears as a wizard in a pointed hat and star-covered robe, carrying a magic wand. He is often called in by The Professor to fix his office computer. ("Okay, first, let's get your fist out of the computer screen.")