Rose is Rose: Running on Alter Ego »

As a six-year-old, Pat Brady took his drawing materials to church and used the pew as a desk while he sat on the kneeler. By 11, he was submitting comic strips to newspapers. But it wasn't until 1984 that Pat, who studied art and creative writing at the University of Wisconsin, began drawing Rose is Rose full-time for national syndication. Today, his work appears in 600 newspapers, and Pat has been nominated five times for the National Cartoonists Society's Best Newspaper Comic Strip Award and six times for the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. Pat and his wife live in Illinois.

When Pat Brady puts pen to paper, readers can't resist following his original images and tight story lines. This creator pulls more material from the one-child Gumbo family than other cartoonists can with five times the number of characters and settings.

That magic comes through in Brady's seventh collection, Rose is Rose Running on Alter Ego. The lively series of daily and Sunday strips revolves around Rose-devoted wife and doting mother-who, try as she might, just can't keep her biker chick fantasies totally in check. Rose never knows, as she manages her blue-collar husband, Jimbo, and their energy-fired son, Pasquale, when Vicki the Biker may show up. But when the long-haired, short-skirted babe surfaces, it's always with a breath of fresh air and a fresh take on "normal" family life.

Besides appearing on the cover, Rose as Vicki shines throughout the collection, in six new full-page drawings created just for the book. Each shows the seemingly satisfied housewife's alter ego performing some mundane chore demanded by Rose's less adventurous life, while Brady's usual mix of family fun, frolic, and fancy gives Gumbo fans plenty of delight.