New cartoon: It's Pickles by a landslide

After a complete rout of the competition, Sparks resident Brian Crane's comic strip "Pickles" joins the Nevada Appeal lineup today.

The reader poll results were overwhelmingly in favor of "Pickles," which received more than 80 percent of the votes. "Tundra," "Sherman's Lagoon" and "Baby Blues" each received about 6 percent of the tally.

"Pickles" follows the family adventures of seniors Earl and Opal Pickles, their daughter and son-in-law Sylvia and Dan, and their grandson Nelson, plus dog Roscoe and cat Muffin.

"You know, its really fun to have ('Pickles') picked up in Carson City because it's so close," Crane said. "I'm certainly glad to be there. I think the readers will connect with it. Sometimes it takes awhile to learn the characters, but I hope readers will enjoy visiting daily with Earl and Opal."

Crane attributes "Pickles'" popularity to the familiarity of the characters.

"I think a lot of people identify with characters as themselves or some person they know," he said recently in a telephone interview from his home studio. He finds inspiration all around him, he said.

Pickles is "kind of autobiographical in many ways, from situations around me or conversations I hear," Crane said. "I draw from my environment, my surroundings, from family and friends."

Crane has lots of inspiration. His family consists of his wife Diane, seven children and seven grandchildren. Certain characteristics are reminiscent of family members. Opal's fast knitting ability, which crops up in various storylines, is "a tribute to my mother who was a real fast knitter."

Born in Twin Falls, Idaho, Crane grew up in the Bay area " San Leandro and Pleasanton " and graduated with a degree in art from Brigham Young University in 1973. After moving back and forth from the Bay area to Idaho, he landed a job in 1984 as art director for an advertising firm in Reno.

"I liked it because it was closer to home but not quite as large."

He only planned to stay about five years, but continues to make Northern Nevada his home 25 years later. After about five years, Crane did tire of advertising.

"I thought back to my childhood dream of starting a comic strip," he said. "I decided to try it. It was 'now or never.' I didn't think I had much of a chance."

Crane struggled with the name for the comic strip and his characters.

"I didn't know what to call it really," he said. "I chose Pickles as the last name of the characters, I thought it went along with their personality, too.

"There's a saying, 'getting into a pickle,' which is something my characters do a lot."

Crane is also inspired by Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip and the name Pickles reminded Crane of that connection. Crane was honored to have Schulz write the forward to the first of four collections of "Pickles" comics: "Pickles." The other books are "Pickles, Too: The Older I Get, The Better I Was," "Still Pickled After All These Years," and "Let's Get Pickled! A Pickles Collection."

Thursday will be the 19th anniversary since "Pickles" first published in newspapers. Today it runs daily in about 500 newspapers worldwide.