Cartoonist

CARTOONIST FETED

American cartoonist Bill Watterson, author of the worldwide cult series Calvin And Hobbes, won the top prize on Sunday for his craft at France's Angouleme world comic strip festival, organisers said. Watterson, 56, won the grand prix at the 41st edition of the festival, beating Japan's Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) and Britain's Alan Moore (Watchmen). He was not present to receive his prize.

Jail for Russian trio in gay murder

MOSCOW - A Russian court has handed down jail terms ranging from nine years to 12½ years to three men who murdered another they believed to be gay.

   The men, all from the same village in Kamchatka in far eastern Russia, killed the man last May as they were convinced of his "non-traditional sexual orientation", prosecutors said in a statement yesterday.

   The court heard that they lured the 29-year-old victim to a deserted part of the forest where he was stabbed multiple times in the chest, face and neck. They later placed him in his car and set it alight using petrol.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

A cartoonist with little to laugh about

Adams suffered first from a condition called focal dystonia, which years later triggered spasmodic dysphonia.

THE Dilbert comic strip milks the rat race for mirth, but its creator Scott Adams had little to laugh about years.

   Adams, 56, is a barely passable cartoonist by his own reckoning. But this son of a postal worker and real estate agent became hugely successful with Dilbert, thanks to his refreshing, subversive digs at office life.

   But brainy Adams was working himself too hard; he would wake up at 4am daily to draw Dilbert, then work all day at the Pacific Bell telephone company before drawing again at night.

   Shortly after he and United Feature Syndicate introduced Dilbert to the world in 1989 as a syndicated cartoon in 50 newspapers globally, Adams' right pinkie finger would experience a spasm each time it touched paper. This made it nigh impossible for him to draw.

   His doctor told him it was incurable focal dystonia.

   Undeterred, he willed his spasms to stop withing weeks. But they returned in 2004. Fortunately, by then, new technology meant he could draw on a computer without exciting his finger.

   A year later, his pinkie problem triggered another form of dystonia called spasmodic dysphonia. That left him unable to talk, which was disastrous because by then, he was able to command up to US$100,000 as a public speaker.

   Doctors treated him by injecting Botox into his neck with giant needles. That enabled him to say "I do" to his wife, Shelly, soon after.

   He had surgery a few years ago, and now talks properly again.

   At 21, Adams escaped his hometown of Windham, New York (population: 2000) for San Francisco, and spent 16 years in the corporate world while moonlighting as a cartoonist and serial innovator, including rolling out nutrient-packed burritos, called Dilberitos, which had those who ate them farting ferociously.