Jay Kennedy, a comics editor working for
King Features, saw
Mallard Fillmore in
The Washington Times and contacted Tinsley, as Kennedy had been looking for the conservative response to
Doonesbury. While developing
Mallard Fillmore for potential syndication under Kennedy's direction, Tinsley won a ''
Reader's Digest Fellowship to Indiana University School of Journalism, and attended graduate school at Indiana University Bloomington. Mallard Fillmore'' launched in 1994 and is still published today. Two collections were released early in the series' run,
Mallard Fillmore and
Mallard Fillmore On the Stump. Tinsley quietly stopped producing new strips in 2019. Since 2020, Mallard Fillmore comics are produced by
Loren Fishman. In 2006, Tinsley was arrested twice for
driving while intoxicated, once in August and again in December, both Class A
misdemeanors. After the December incident, he attacked the sentencing judge, Roderick McGillivray, in several of his comics. ==References==