Piranha Club
| Piranha Club | |
|---|---|
Title panel for Piranha Club Sunday strips. | |
| Author(s) | Bud Grace |
| Current status/schedule | Running |
| Launch date | February 1, 1988 |
| End date | February 3, 2018 |
| Alternate name(s) | Ernie (1988–1998) |
| Syndicate(s) | King Features Syndicate |
| Genre(s) | Humor |
Piranha Club was a comic strip written and illustrated by Bud Grace. It was originally called Ernie, but the title was changed in 1998. The club is meant as a parody on Lions Club International, and the strip made its debut in February 1988. In 1989, the Swedish Academy of Comic Art awarded Bud Grace with the Adamson Statuette. Grace received the 1993 National Cartoonists Society's Newspaper Comic Strip Award for his work on the strip.
The strip is highly popular in the Scandinavian countries Norway and Sweden, where it is published in a bimonthly (previously monthly) comic book under the original title, Ernie. It is also one of the most popular comic strips regularly published in newspapers in Estonia and Latvia (if not the most popular). It is published in Scandinavia's largest and second largest newspapers by circulation, Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. It is also syndicated to Japan's The Japan News along with Calvin and Hobbes.
In January 2018, Bud Grace announced his retirement on his website. The final strip ran on February 3, 2018, after 30 years.