Fort Knox creator and USO team up for Military Kids

WASHINGTON, December 17, 2009

Fort Knox cartoonist Paul Jon has created five special pieces of line art for a USO coloring contest for kids. The art features the Fort Knox characters, Major Joe Knox, his wife, Jane, and their two boys, Donald and Wesley, as well as typical scenes of USO events for kids. The top entries will be featured on the USO's blog site throughout the week of December 27th.

The USO reported an immediate, record-breaking response, with more than 130 downloads of the art in the first two hours the contest was posted. You can read all about the contest on the USO's web site

Fort Knox Cartoonist Paul Jon is a military brat himself, and he approached the USO with an offer to help military families. The USO came up with this project to give children something fun to do for the holidays.

Paul Jon is the son of an Army colonel whose tours of duty included Fort Leavenworth, Fort Jackson and Fort Knox. In addition to his daily and Sunday Fort Knox duties, Paul Jon runs the creative services department of a software company, and his artwork has appeared in newspapers, magazines and online publications across the country. He earned his B.A. in journalism from the University of South Carolina. He is married and has two beautiful goldfish.

All About That Military Brat Comic Strip called Fort Knox

I've got an Army Brat friend who created a comic strip based on his childhood and - guess what? - it got picked up by a major syndicate! So now he finds himself scrambling to drum up readership to prove to his new bosses that they weren't wrong in taking him on.

Which they weren't.

After all, how many people out there are Military Brats? I'm gonna say KA-Zillions, including me. (In fact, I've never really known any other lifestyle other than military...born into it, married into it)

I'm pretty sure we Brats can relate to my friend's comic strip in more ways than we can relate to a lot of the strips out there that are currently in full-tilt boogey.

My friend is Paul Boscacci and his new toon is "Fort Knox". You can see a complete run-down of it here: http://www.postwritersgroup.com/comics/fortknox.htm

The Facebook page is here: http://www.facebook.com/pboscacci#/fortknoxcomic?ref=share

Right now, Paul's working on placing his strip in the Garden City, Kansas, area. Please participate in the poll being conducted by the GC Telegram: http://swktalk.com/comics/ Kick back for a while and read through all of the strips. Each one of them is in danger of elimination so make sure you vote to keep the ones you like. Personally, I'm going to vote to keep all of them. After all, what makes me laugh might not make someone else laugh and vice-versa. :-)

"Fort Knox" officially premiers on October 5th. Give it a shot and give it a chance. And, remember, enjoy comic strips every day or they'll go away!

~ j