So, Cathy is done this weekend.
I used to love the comics page in the newspaper. Then I discovered nothing ever changes. Freaking Beatle Bailey is still the same guy he was in 1969. Find a formula, gag-a-day, peaked fifteen years ago, draw a strip and the editors will love you. No wonder nobody is reading newspapers anymore.
Hey do you remember Calvin and Hobbes? That was funny so was Bloom County and Zippy the Pinhead although I had to buy the Boston Herald to read Zippy. Peanuts is still a work of genius and I dig Dennis the Menace even if he never grew up like the folks on Gasoline Alley or For Better or For Worse. I was even into Gil Thorpe, you had to count the number of drag queens that the artist had unintentionally drawn in the strip but it was still funny. There’s new stuff too only not in the papers. Check out Freak Angels if you haven’t already.
Oh yeah Cathy is done this weekend. Cathy Guisewite is done with her frumpy, neurotic alter ego and is moving on into other creative endeavors. She’s sixty and she’s been drawing the strip for 34 years and something about spending time with her step daughter who’s 18. I figure she’s taking the money and running. Cathy has been over since she got married.
Cathy became a brand. You saw her nose-less face on anything that could be imprinted. It was a shout out to those modern gals who felt chronically sad but ever hopeful. Feminists hated that but hey it’s a freaking comic strip. All men aren’t represented by that jovial wife beater Andy Capp are they? I’d kill to see an empowered woman with real problems in the comics but you’re going to get insecure, needy and periodically psychotic because it’s a gag-a-day strip that has four panels. Hey hand it to Cathy Guisewite for letting the ink Cathy get married. You’re not going to see Jon get married to that freaking vet on Garfield any time soon.
It’s just not fair to pick on one comic strip like Cathy. It’s been around for a long time and even if you can’t manage a tear at least give the lady a nod. All that’s left is speculating what will happen on October 3rd. I’m hoping she gets pregnant.
My favorite take on Cathy has always been what it would have been like if R.Crumb took over…….
………..please welcome kimberly, folks.
Cathy RIP
Ooh Cathy, I’ll miss you.
You had it right that time you had a picture of you and all your co-workers running around with papers in your hands panicked and sweating trying to get your word done.
You said, “No matter how many people are in the office we are always alone.”
Cathy, RIP
I haven’t been out this morning. I wonder what happened in the final panel.
RIP Cathy… it’s about freakin’ time.
Calvin & Hobbes, Far Side, Bloom County/Outland/Opus… Why couldn’t YOU have been the comics that will never die? Garfield? Beetle Bailey? Peanuts? Haven’t been funny in 20 years.
Charles Schulz wanted the strip to end when he died. United Features, who owns Peanuts, put it in syndication instead.
Cold Blood,
I am not so sure that is correct, that he wanted it to die when he did.
However, I am sure that on the evening of his last printed strip he went home and died peacefully in his sleep.
That is cool.
My Great uncle, one day, played a perfect day of golf, for him, enjoyed beautiful weather, a glorious meal with his wife at home, and he told her so.
He also said that if he could go to sleep for ever that would be fine as well. And he did, that night.
They worked it out that the last original strip was published right after he died. That was very cool. He also said there was no way that Charlie Brown was going to kick the football in that last panel 🙂
AACK I was right she’s preggers.