Background About Dave Coverly Dave Coverly admits there is no overriding theme, no tidy little philosophy that precisely describes what Speed Bump is about. "Basically," he says, "if life were a movie, these would be the outtakes." These "outtakes" now appear in about 200 newspapers internationally, including the Washington Post, Toronto Globe & Mail, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Irish Times (Dublin), The Observer (London), Cincinnati Enquirer, Las Vegas Sun, and San Francisco Examiner. In May, 2000, the first

"Speed Bump" book, Speed Bump: A Collection of Cartoon Skidmarks, was released by Andrews McMeel Publishers. In addition, American Greetings carries a line of "Speed Bump" greeting cards, which won a "Retail Excellence" award in November, 2000. Coverly grew up in Plainwell, Michigan, where he began cartooning as a little kid. He got the cartooning bug after seeing his work published in the high school paper, and started taking cartooning seriously in 1986 as an undergraduate student at Eastern Michigan University, where he penned a comic panel called Freen for the school newspaper. He also studied in England during this time, and returned to EMU to receive his bachelor's degree in both philosophy and imaginative writing in 1987. He continued his cartooning in graduate school at Indiana University, where his panel won numerous national awards; he was graduated from IU with a master's in creative writing in 1992. While taking some time off from graduate school, Coverly was an art director for a public relations firm, and an editorial cartoonist for the Battle Creek Enquirer. In 1990, he returned to Indiana and became the editorial cartoonist for The Herald-Times in Bloomington. He also began a free-lance career, and his work subsequently appeared in such publications as Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, and USA Today. In 1994, Creators Syndicate picked up his untitled cartoon panel, helped in choosing the name Speed Bump, and a year later it was running in nearly 100 papers. Coverly left The Herald-Times in 1995 to concentrate on his syndicated work. In 2003 and 1995, Speed Bump was given a Reuben Award for Best Newspaper Panel by the National Cartoonists Society, an award for which it was nominated again in 1997, 2001, and 2002. In 1998, the same organization gave him another Reuben Award for Best Greeting Cards, an award for which his cards were nominated again in 1999. Coverly now works out of an attic studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with inspiration from his close friend, Cuppa Joe. He is married to Chris, and they have two daughters, Alayna and Simone. Dave's website is speedbump.com.