Background about Darrin Bell From the pen of cartoonist Darrin Bell comes Candorville a comic strip about a diverse group of friends in the inner city. Through the eyes of its main characters--Lemont Brown, a young aspiring writer; Susan Garcia, a young woman working in the corporate world; and Clyde, an angry young man who makes the wrong choices in life- -Candorville explores issues such as bigotry, poverty, homelessness, biracialism, the culture of victimhood, youth and personal responsibility--but in an upbeat way. Honest.

Often brutally honest, but always evenhanded, Candorville steadily built a loyal following on the Web and in several African-American newspapers. Syndicated worldwide by The Washington Post Writers Group in 2003, Candorvillewas one of few comic strips to launch in both English and Spanish. Darrin started free-lancing editorial cartoons while attending the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained a degree in political science. His cartoons have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times and several other publications, as well as on MTV, CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC. The cartoons come from a black/minority perspective but comment on a wide range of issues. "I believe there's no issue of relevance that doesn't also affect minority communities just as it does the white community," Bell says. Bell was born in South Los Angeles in 1975. His parents, both teachers, soon moved to East Los Angeles. At a young age, he remembers going along with his mother while she attended classes at Cal State Los Angeles. Darrin would sit in a corner with some art supplies, quietly drawing. During most of his school years, a time when urban school districts were being desegregated, he was bused to schools as much as an hour away. "We were always minorities in every neighborhood we lived in, which I think opened my eyes a bit more to the rest of the world," he says. "I've always had friends who were different from me, so I have a lot of respect for diversity." About the time Darrin enrolled at Berkeley in 1993, he developed the concept for a strip called "Lemont Brown," which evolved into "Candorville." He also collaborates with Theorn Heir on the comic strip "Rudy Park," syndicated by United Media. He and his wife Laura Bustamante live in Berkeley, Calif.