Patrick Roberts

Patrick Roberts

About

Patrick Roberts never wanted to be a cartoonist. He was quite content working as a professional technical writer.

Born in El Paso, Texas in 1962, Patrick moved to Lawton, Okla. at the age of 5. His family thought they better go along for the trip too. Patrick graduated from Cameron University in 1985 with a major in sociology and a minor in management. In 1986, Patrick was hired by Unisys Corporation, where he worked for 16 years.

At the age of 33, he read a small chapter about cartooning in the back of a book and thought, Hmm, I wonder if I could do that. Sitting down with some pens and a pile of paper, Patrick drew a single panel cartoon and thought to himself, “Hey, that’s kind of funny. Let me try another one.”

Throughout his single panel cartoons, a T-Rex kept reappearing. Like a typical muse, Todd the T-Rex gradually demanded more than one panel to adequately express himself, so Patrick complied. It snowballed from there, and a new career path was forged. In 2001, The Oklahoman, Oklahoma’s largest newspaper, started publishing Todd the Dinosaur. Later, this attracted the attention of the late Jay Kennedy of King Features Syndicate. Kennedy told Patrick the same thing The Oklahoman editor said years earlier: That Todd the Dinosaur is very endearing and the strip should be syndicated. And, so it began.

Comics