It's A Magical World
I like to read the daily comics. It all started with at my parents' house. When I was a child they subscribed to three of the local rags, The Oakland Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Contra Costa Times. As a little kid I would forgo the front section with all the "boring" news, the sports pages had no value to me, but the comic...that was where it was at.As the years crept ahead, I found myself expanding my interests beyond the comics section. First came the sports section, then the front section and on it went. But the comics was always one of the first places I went, even as an adult. There was a certain familiarity to the comics. And if the comic was particularly well done, it even became alive with distinct personalities.
But along with time, like in real life, comics come and go. Artists, and that is what they are when they are really good, are real people and will retire. The first of my 2-D friends to go was a comic called Bloom County. This was a biting, satirical look at life in the 80's. It's creator was Berke Breathed.Although many people thought that Opus the penguin was the center of Bloom, the actual original protagonist was Milo Bloom. The little blonde boy with glasses. Possibly the most grounded and wordly of the bunch.
This comic faded away in 1989. Breathed tried a couple of spin offs, Outland and Opus. Opus still appears in the Sunday Chronicle. However neither has the affect on me that the original had.
Calvin And Hobbes was the next comic to bite the dust. This strip was created in 1985 by Bill Watterson and ran until 1995. A little boy and his very real friend Hobbes the tiger. Yes, yes, one could argue that all Hobbes was was a stuffed animal that came to life in the eyes of Calvin. But if you have ever been around kids, you know how real the imagination can be.Watterson treated the craft of creating comics with great respect. He saw that, at its best, comic strip creation was an art form. He never allowed C&H to be licensed for anything other than compelation books of his work. Watterson felt that stuffed replicants of Calvin and Hobbes, or mugs of the strip would only cheapen his work. So all those stickers on cars you see of Calvin peeing on "name the item"? They're illegal copies.
Watterson shut down Calvin And Hobbes December 31, 1995. My two pals riding down a snowy hill on a sled into the sunset. Some of my favorite words about life are the last words of Calvin, "It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy...let's go exploring!"
Sadly, December 31, 2006 will signal the end to another comic I read frequently, Foxtrot. Although it has not quite held the affection that Calvin And Hobbes or Bloom County did, Foxtrot still was able to find its way into my heart. It will appear in the Sunday editions, but Foxtrot will no longer enliven the dailies.
I realize that these are fictional characters, so stop calling the nut house on your pal Neil! I guess it's the familiarity that I miss. As one by one my favorite comics retire, each one marks the passage of time. Markers of periods in my life, good memories. Change is good, but familiarity is good as well.
posted by LoneCactus @ 6:39 AM
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