10 Best The Boondocks Comics, Ranked (2024)

Before it was an animated television series on Adult Swim, The Boondocks was a controversial and politically charged comic strip that was nationally syndicated in newspapers from 1999 until 2006. The strip stars Huey Freeman, a revolutionary Marxist and Black nationalist named after the Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton.

While early The Boondocks strips were mostly about the culture shock that Huey and his brother Riley were experiencing, the later strips were a scathing indictment of President George W. Bush-era politics. The best Boondocks strips reflect the comic's compelling characters, the creator Aaron McGruder’s social and political commentary, or both of these elements.

10 Uncle Ruckus Is Featured in a Satirical McDonald's Ad

April 21, 2005

Uncle Ruckus, a self-hating Black man, was a fan-favorite in the Boondocks television series on Adult Swim. However, Uncle Ruckus didn’t make too many appearances in the Boondocks comic strip, and his appearances were only in the later years. While not as memorable of a character in the comic as the television series, the strips from April 2005 when Uncle Ruckus appeared in satirical McDonald’s ads were hilarious. The Boondocks comic was sticking it to corporate power by making fun of how television commercials sometimes featured celebrities. Since the rise of social media influencers who get paid to promote products, these strips have only improved with age.

According to Aaron McGruder in All the Rage: The Boondocks Past and Present, “the newspaper doesn’t really do the character justice because even the most tame material we could come up with had folks up in arms.” McGruder said six newspapers pulled the Boondocks comic after Uncle Ruckus called Huey and Riley “chimpanzees” and “negro hooligans.” The character is a statement about internalized racism, and he's supposed to make the reader feel uncomfortable.

9 The Freeman Kids Experience Culture Shock

April 25, 1999

While this isn’t the first Boondocks comic strip, it’s the first syndicated Sunday strip. It depicts Huey and Riley looking around in the new neighborhood Grandad has transplanted to them. It sets the tone for many of the early Boondocks comics. These two Black kids from the South Side of Chicago are somewhere that feels foreign to them. They're like a fish out of water. They don’t understand this new place nor know how to handle the changes to their environment. In other words, they’re experiencing culture shock.

When the Freemans first moved to this predominately white suburb, Huey and Riley were both unhappy with it - but for different reasons. Riley was upset that they lived on Timid Deer Lane. As he put it, “I gotta tell the fools where I rest,” and Timid Deer Lane isn’t a street name that sounds tough. Huey was upset that their new school, J. Edgar Hoover Elementary, was named after the founder of the FBI and someone who Huey calls a “fascist” and a “tyrannical tyrant.” Riley handled his culture shock by grabbing a can of spray paint and changing the street sign names in his neighborhood to Notorious B.I.G Avenue, Wu-Tang Drive, Buckshot Avenue, and others that were more to his liking. Huey idly sat outside the house with a baseball bat, conducting what he called a “neighborhood Klanwatch.” Both behaviors irritated Grandad, but it wasn't enough for him to move the family back to the South Side of Chicago.

8 Huey & Riley See the World Very Differently

May 21, 1999

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This early Boondocks strip highlights the starkly different worldviews of brothers Huey and Riley, which sometimes cause them to bump heads. While they’re both troublemakers, for Huey, it’s usually a part of what he considers to be fighting for racial, social and/or economic justice. Riley, on the other hand, idolizes the gangsta rappers of the 1990s and early 2000s. He wants to cause trouble in their new neighborhood for trouble’s sake.

While Huey can often be seen screaming from a literal hilltop about his leftist ideals, Riley will loudly proclaim his plans for mayhem and conquest. Riley frequently takes pleasure in causing trouble, while Huey is more inclined to view troublemaking as a necessary act. Huey and Riley’s relationship is relatable to anyone with a sibling they love dearly despite being very different from them.

7 Tom Dubois Is Mad His Wife Sarah Voted for Ralph Nader in 2000

Nov. 6, 2000

Tom Dubois, a staunch Democrat in an interracial marriage, wasn’t happy when his wife, Sarah DuBois, voted for the Green Party candidate in the 2000 presidential election. He called her a “hussy” for her lack of loyalty to the Democratic Party. As a consequence, Sarah kicked Tom out of the house. She only allowed him to return home after Huey offered to be a mediator between them as they discussed their marital (and electoral) problems.

Some Democrats blamed Ralph Nader for Al Gore losing the election to George W. Bush. They charged that if the votes cast for Nader in Florida had been cast for Gore instead, then he would’ve won. While the names and details change, this anger among two-party voters toward third-party voters persists. It’s just another way the Boondocks comic remains relevant despite its commentary being about the current events of yesteryear.

6 A Satirical Bush Re-election Ad Tells "Urban Youth" Not to Vote

Sept. 5, 2004

This is a good precursor for what The Boondocks would later soon be known for in its Adult Swim television adaptation: a hard-hitting social satire about race in America. While The Boondocks was always a comic about race, it was tonally different in ways that can be hard to identify. In the Boondocks comic, readers would open up the funny pages of the newspaper and see Huey Freeman explicitly calling politicians and other public figures racist. Huey regularly preached about a socialist revolution. The Boondocks comic was loud and in your face, like an old punk rock song. However, strips like this set the stage for something different to come.

Satire assumes the reader or viewer is capable of at least a bare minimum of critical analysis. The Boondocks wasn't literally encouraging young Black Americans not to vote. It was using satire as a tool to make fun of those who are. It was making fun of those in power who are out of touch. Sometimes laughter is not only the best medicine, but it's essential to deal with the world’s chaos.

5 Huey Asks Ceasar to Think More Critically About Star Wars

May 27, 2002

In addition to commenting on race and politics, the Boondocks comic was no stranger to critiquing movies, music, and entertainment media. This strip is among the most memorable ones that do this—but it's still mid-tier among the best strips because, nonetheless, The Boondocks was at its strongest when doing the former. Huey encouraged his best friend Ceasar to consider Star Wars' deeper messages. By extension, The Boondocks urged readers to be more media literate.

Huey Freeman didn’t like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, the first movie in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. He questioned a Star Wars fan why he was camped out in front of the movie theater to see the second movie, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, because, in his view, the first one wasn’t good. However, after Huey saw Attack of the Clones, he praised the movie and called Emperor Palpatine a metaphor for President Bush. This Boondocks strip allowed readers to decide for themselves if George Lucas really believed that 9/11 was an inside job. The punchline suggested this detail might only be Huey's paranoid rant.

4 The Boondocks Mocks Phony Patriotism After 9/11

Oct. 19, 2001

The early 2000s were an interesting time. Many American households were waving American flags—including those who previously didn’t own a flag. In the years after 9/11, The Boondocks didn’t shy away from mocking what Aaron McGruder saw as phony patriotism and blind nationalism. In A Right to be Hostile: A Boondocks Treasury, McGruder wrote, “a part of me believes that without September 11, The Boondocks would’ve ended sometime in 2002 – a victim of early burnout and creative frustration.”

This is why the Boondocks comic introduced the recurring characters of Flagee and Ribbon, a talking American flag and a ribbon resembling a Support Our Troops bumper sticker. In McGruder's view, these symbols were being used to justify President George W. Bush's foreign and domestic policies. Flagee and Ribbon espoused talking points that McGruder saw as the more common narrative than what characters usually say in The Boondocks. Any time Ribbon began to question war or jingoism, Flagee would tell him to shut up.

3 The Boondocks Compares President Bush to Hilter

Oct. 13, 2002

Aaron McGruder had guts. This Boondocks comic strip was published in newspapers across the United States a year after 9/11. According to the Pew Research Center, President George W. Bush had a 73% approval rating in 2002, the year it was published.

For someone who doesn’t remember the political landscape of the early 2000s, it can be hard to understand what made a strip like this so controversial. For the last 15 years or so, comparing major politicians to the fascist dictator Adolf Hitler might seem like fair game to some of those working in legacy media. However, in the time of the Boondocks comic, it was anything but commonplace. Nonetheless, strips like this accurately reflected what many of those who opposed President Bush, such as anti-war protestors, were thinking and feeling.

2 Ceasar Is Huey's Best Friend & Closest Confidant

March 09, 2003

Riley calls Huey a “nerd,” and Grandad calls him “foolish.” In other words, no one in his immediate family truly listens to him or takes him seriously. In the early Boondocks comics, Huey’s only friend is Jazmine, the neighbor girl. While Jazmine is nice to Huey, he doesn’t feel she understands him. This is why the introduction of Ceasar, a transplant from Brooklyn, was important. Ceasar listens to Huey’s rants when no one else does. Ceasar may not always agree with Huey’s thoughts and opinions, but he usually understands why he feels the way he does.

Despite often playing the straight man to Huey and Riley, Ceasar can be quirky in his own right. While he's not as passionate as Huey about the state of the world, he has a deep-rooted interest in popular culture. In one strip, Ceasar suggests that Huey’s idea for revolution needs better branding. He said Huey should say, “It’s revolution time,” like how The Thing says, "It's clobbering time" in Fantastic Four comic books. In another strip, Ceasar gets sent to the principal’s office for passionately singing a James Brown song in the middle of class, assuming others wanted to hear it at this moment. It’s a shame that Ceasar never appeared on the Boondocks television show on Adult Swim because he's arguably the best character other than Huey.

1 Huey Calls an Anti-terrorism Tip Line

Oct. 4, 2001

After 9/11, federal agencies encouraged citizens to report suspicious activity, using the slogan, "if you see something, say something." Well, Huey certainly said something. So, a few weeks after the towers fell, Huey called the FBI’s tip line to let them know that President Ronald Reagan’s administration helped train and finance Osama Bin Ladin, the mastermind of the terrorist attack. This was a historical fact that many Americans didn’t know – and the strip received backlash from readers and newspaper editors.

This is the best strip because it not only shows Huey's wisecracking, troublemaking personality but was a turning point that set the tone for the greatness to come in the Boondocks comic—something often more focused on the political news of the day and less on the ongoing antics of the characters. Aaron McGruder said in All the Rage: The Boondocks Past and Present, “In the years to come, if anyone remembers me or this strip, they will remember the 10/4/01 strip.”

The Boondocks

Aaron McGruder's "The Boondocks" is a syndicated comic strip that ran from 1996 to 2006, offering a satirical lens on African American culture and U.S. politics through the eyes of Huey Freeman, a young black radical. The strip gained acclaim for its sharp commentary and was later adapted into an animated television series.

Writer

Aaron McGruder

Penciler

Aaron McGruder, Jennifer Seng, Carl Jones

Publisher

Three Rivers Press, Andrews McMeel Publishing