Ten-year old Red and his dog Rover offer a delightful look at a remarkable time through their extraordinary friendship. In creating Red and Rover, cartoonist Brian Basset--a self-professed "retro" kind of guy--found himself mixing his interests in historical hindsight with his love of dogs. Perhaps fueled by too much caffeine or too much time on his hands, he conceived the strip and, over time, nurtured it. Launched by The Washington Post Writers Group in 2000, Red and Rover now appears in more than 100 newspapers worldwide and has spawned 2 book collections. In 2004 it was nominated for the National Cartoonist Society’s Comic Strip of the Year award.

Photo by Erik Sartoris

Brian Basset was born in Norwalk, Conn., in 1957 but grew up in the Washington, D.C., suburb of McLean, Va., where his father was a political cartoonist and his mother a mental health administrator. Like millions of other kids in the 1960s, Brian could be found glued to the TV set, captivated by the early years of the space program and its goal of putting a man on the moon. Television also gave Brian the chance to formulate his budding taste in humor through such shows as "My Three Sons," "My Favorite Martian," "The Monkees," and of course "The Brady Bunch." In Brian's world, however, you were either a fan of "The Brady Bunch" or "The Partridge Family" but never both. In 1975, Brian enrolled at Ohio State University where he lampooned state and student politics as a political cartoonist for the school paper, The Lantern.

Three years later, among the misty firs and pre-grunge culture of Seattle, where just one lone Starbucks dotted the landscape, Brian landed a six-month "tryout" as editorial cartoonist for The Seattle Times. This "tryout" lasted 16 years. In 1994, he began to devote himself full-time to his comic strip, “Adam” (now called “Adam@Home”) which he had developed a decade earlier with Universal Press Syndicate.

Basset has been active with the Seattle/King County Humane Society for more than a decade, as well as helping animal shelters across the country with fund drives, donations and speaking engagements. In 2006, Rover will have the honor of promoting spay and neutering throughout the Evergreen State by appearing on Washington license plates.

A big believer in space exploration, Basset was honored in 2004 with a one-man show of his Red and Rover space-themed strips at NASA's Washington, DC headquarters. He is the first and only comic strip cartoonist so recognized. On July 26, 2005, an original drawing by Basset commemorating America's return to flight lifted off launch pad 39B along with the crew of the space shuttle Discovery for a near flawless 13-day mission. Red and Rover had finally gone into space.

Brian Basset -- minutely redheaded after all these years -- is married and the father of two boys. Basset draws from his studio in Seattle, Washington. When he's not at the drawing board, he enjoys cooking, traveling, movies, reading, a gluttony of sports and drinking Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink.