Clint McElroy has conquered radio, theater, podcasts and graphic novels. His latest foray is into the world of children’s literature. Sounds about right.
By Carter Seaton
HQ 117 | SPRING 2022
Funnyman Clint McElroy has recently found a new audience for his quirky brand of humor — your grandchildren. His picture book, Goldie’s Guide to Grandchilding, is the latest success in McElroy’s long history of finding ways to make people laugh. And yet, being a funnyman wasn’t what he initially expected to do with his life.
McElroy was born in Ironton, Ohio, where his dad owned radio station WIRO. While McElroy didn’t want to follow in those footsteps, he did want to be in broadcasting, but as a television producer — the behind-the-scenes guy, not the radio voice everyone recognized. However, while studying journalism at Marshall University in 1974, he realized he needed a job. Gordy Hall, the WKEE radio news director, offered him a part-time job doing weekend news; and he accepted.
“I got into radio and couldn’t escape for 47 years,” said McElroy.
Soon he was also doing characters at WKEE, changing his voice from the newscaster’s sonorous tones to those for which he became most recognized, like Spud Rimshot, Ducky Crabtree and Master Sergeant Surly Bottoms. In 1990 he moved to WTCR radio, bringing all his well-loved characters with him.
Starting in 2014, he and his sons, Justin, Travis and Griffin, began producing The Adventure Zone, a podcast that entailed goofing around while playing a game loosely based on Dungeons and Dragons. The podcast became a huge hit.
A couple of years into the series they were approached by a literary agent who asked if they’d consider adapting it into a series of graphic novels. Using McElroy’s experience writing comic books for Marvel Comics in the 1980s, the McElroys began producing The Adventure Zone comic books, published by First Second Books, a division of Macmillan Publishing.
“I brought my knowledge of scripting and laying out comic books, but it has been a team effort,” McElroy explained. “After we’d done one or two, we fleshed out other characters and other storylines; and that’s really what made it so popular. The whole thing just exploded. The books started off with about 110 pages; now they’ve almost doubled.”
The series put the McElroy’s on the top of the New York Times bestseller list for three weeks in 2018. Season 5 is coming out in the fall, and they’re under contract to do two more.
Because of The Adventure Zone’s popularity, their agent asked them to go on tour doing live versions of it.
“When we go on these tours, we take the whole family. To be able to do that was too good an opportunity to pass up,” McElroy said with a big smile.
In a way, the live Adventure Zone gigs led to McElroy’s creation of Goldie, his blond, slightly snaggle-toothed character who wants kids to know the proper care and feeding of grandparents.
At dinner in New York one night, McElroy’s editor, Calista Brill, asked him if he’d ever considered doing a children’s picture book.
“I would really like you to think about doing something with some of that subversive sense of humor that you have,” Brill told him. “Our goal would be a book that kids could read but, more importantly, that parents and other people could read with them.”
McElroy said he immediately flashed back to his childhood, sitting next to his dad while he read Dr. Seuss books to him.
“They say write what you know. My favorite job of all is being a grandparent, so I kind of combined all my grandchildren into one character, used their sense of humor and intelligence and created Goldie,” McElroy explained.
Drawn by Eliza Kinkz, Goldie is an adorable character who teaches grandchildren how they can successfully manipulate their grandparents and still keep them happy. Of course, in the story, Grandpa is the one babysitting Goldie — but not from Goldie’s perspective. If the book does well the publishers have already told McElroy they would like to do a series.
“Ultimately, what I’d like to do is Goldie’s Guide to Global Domination. I want to kick up the stakes a little bit,” said McElroy, his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.
But, with McElroy’s backpack full of talents, don’t be surprised to see lots more of Goldie’s adventures. Who knows, she might appear in her own podcast or play. After all, for Clint and Goldie, the sky is the limit.
