Attention, women of America: Mark October 3, 2010 on your calendars. That will be a national day of celebration for feminists (and, really, for all human beings) everywhere, with dancing in the streets, parades, and fireworks. That is the day that the final Cathy comic strip will be published:
“She’s decided to end the comic on Oct. 3,” Universal Press Syndicate executive John Glynn tells Comic Riffs. “She is deeply appreciative of all the relationships and all the fans, but after 34 years, she feels it is time to hang it up.”
Words cannot express how happy this makes me. The only way this could make me happier is if Cathy does the honorable thing and goes out as a suicide bomber*, taking The Family Circus, Marmaduke, and Garfield with her. Thank you, Slog tipper Banna. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
* Although this plan does have its problems: I’m unsure if Cathy’s hands, which have been so lazily illustrated for the past twenty years that they now resemble mangled starfish, would be able to properly operate a plunging mechanism to activate the bomb. If she loves America, she will find a way to do the deed.
Here’s hoping for collateral damage to BC, which went psycho-christian (really? christian cavemen?) a couple years back.
Allow me to be among the first, Paul, to thank you for posting this wonderful bit of news. Owners of “Blondie”,”Beetle Bailey”, “Hagar”, “Shoe”, “B.C.”: Please follow suit as soon as possible.
Honestly – aside from the very occaisonal Dilbert I can’t think of a comic I’ve enjoyed since I was <10 years old.
Do away with them all I say. They seem to be the laziest medium ever invented.
Did anyone make a “de-ack-tivated” joke yet?
@3: “Geroff my lawn!”
May I nominate “For Better or Worse” to go too? The artist has apparently re-started the strip from its beginning decades ago, with minimal updating. It has not worn well with time.
@1:
A couple of years? Johnny Hart went psycho-xtian decades ago…
Hopefully the bomb also takes out The Lockhorns…
ACK!
@3- Close, but you can actually trace the downfall of comics as a real medium with the end of 3 very different comics- Gary Larson’s The Far Side; Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes; and Berke Breathed’s Bloom County/Outland. Doonesbury is still there, occasionally being interesting, and the Boondocks isn’t bad, but there really isn’t anything that makes me interested in the medium like the three I mentioned above…
@7 My bad. Maybe I only noticed a couple years ago. It was always one of the ones I read last, out of a sense of duty.
@1, @7 it’s starting to veer back to normal territory now that Johnny is dead and his son has taken over.
I agree that most comics suck and most of the actually good comic strip writers are no longer writing (Calvin and Hobbes is the best!). I do still enjoy Dilbert and Get Fuzzy though.
@7, @11 – Johnny Hart went crazy years ago, but then he died. Since then, the comic has moved sharply away from the Christian nonsense to just plain nonsense. It’s no longer preachy, but it hasn’t been funny in a very long time.
It’s not in my paper, so I really couldn’t give a shit. I do love “Pearls Before Swine,” though.
@10 I was going to mention The Boondocks as well, but they haven’t had any new strips in over 4 years because McGruder’s been focusing on the animated series. It’s a shame, it was the last bastion of hope for comic strips.
If you like comics or want to like them, here’s my pro tip: start by not reading them in newspapers.
(If you want to define “comics” as only strips published in newspapers, that’s just wacky, but ok, that’s your prerogative.)
I bet she will follow in the GOD-AWFUL footsteps of Marmaduke and Garfield and get her very own movie!!! ACK!!
Dear god, I miss Bloom County.
There are some good comics out there – the K Chronicles, Pearls Before Swine, Get Fuzzy, Dykes to Watch Out For – but holy crapoly, most newspapers have the WORST. I mean, good gods, the Tacoma paper (which is worse crap even than the No-Inheritance-Tax-Times) still has MARY WORTH. Seriously? Mary Worth?
Cathy needs to come out as a lesbian and have her dog put to sleep for shitting on her pillow.
I like The Duplex. Monty, too.
The health of the comics reflects the health of the industry in general. It’s run by crazy old people who, for the life of them, can’t figure out why noody likes the milquetoast shit they publish.
Y’all should check out The Phantom. I unironically love that comic strip
Unfunny comics now have a postmodern purpose: white out the speech balloons to create your own narrative, or replace the captions with personal zingers. Make Spider-Man weigh the benefits of exchange traded funds, or Dogbert act like a NYPD officer with Dilbert in the role of a Haitian immigrant. Creative types have had such fun with the Family Circus strip.
@ 10 – True dat.
25 of the best C&H strips:
http://www.progressiveboink.com/archive/calvinh…
Take it away, Liz Lemon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbCT5fXdhhc
@10: There are still a few funny witty strips running today. I’d mention “Get Fuzzy”, “Non Sequitur”, and maybe even “Foxtrot”. And Dilbert, of course.
Yesterday’s Lio had an interesting (in the sense of coincidental, I think) Cathy reference:
http://www.gocomics.com/lio/2010/08/11/
Mark Tatulli periodically skewers other strips, but also makes some hat-tip style references to them. On the whole I find Lio more tolerable than most modern strips, but I’m with everyone else in mourning Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, and Boondocks.
And it’s interesting that Paul mentioned the exact same inane strips that I did when I posted in the Lio forum.
@10, totally agree. Cathy is so awful, it’s meta. It’s probably one of the more interesting things to look at on the comics page, in a rubber-necking sorta way.
And on October 4th, 2010, “Cathy Classic” begins.
The weird thing about Garfield is that ever since Jon and Liz hooked up the comic is funny again. How’d that happen?
Get Fuzzy is consistently the worst thing on the comics page. The only one that even gives it a run for the money is Adam at Home.