Overboard en Español by Chip Dunham

A native of LaCrosse, Wis., Chip Dunham started his cartooning career in his early 20s when he decided to try his hand at magazine cartooning. Although he had no previous experience, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Sunday magazine purchased six of the first 12 cartoons he produced. Several other publications also purchased his work, and Chip began to have recurring fantasies about becoming a regular cartoonist for The New Yorker.

The New Yorker saw things a little differently, however, and the speed with which his submissions were returned gave Dunham a new appreciation for the efficiency of both Federal Express and the magazine's staff. Discouraged, Dunham put cartooning aside and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, where he received a journalism degree in 1980. After a year reporting for a small weekly paper, Dunham traded his reporter's notebook for a paintbrush and joined a friend's house painting business.

A few years (and several great tans) later, Dunham was lured back to humor writing when his brother asked him to help write gags for his standup comedy act. The experience reawakened Dunham's interest in cartooning, and in 1989 he began developing Overboard, which chronicles the misadventures of a band of lovable, loutish pirates. In 1990, after turning down contract offers from three other syndicates, Dunham teamed up with Universal to launch the strip. Overboard was nominated for Best Comic Strip in 1993 by the members of the National Cartoonists Society.

Dunham and his dog Sam live in Beverly Hills, Mich. His hobbies include erasing.