CSotD: A rare doubleheader
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Obviously, the name of the blog suggests only featuring one strip per day, but I thought it noteworthy that two cartoonists — Lalo Alcaraz and Darrin Bell — chose to salute the retiring Cathy on the same day. And a pretty good unintentional segue between them, don't you think?
Cathy Guisewhite's decision to retire is understandable; her decision to end Cathy and free up a spot in 700 papers for some new cartoonist is admirable. It's kind of a shame that she is as much to be respected for the latter as for the former, but that's where the industry is right now. There are a number of zombie strips that have continued beyond the death of the originator, but there are also a good number that were simply handed off because of burn-out, and that's just not right.
Occasionally — I'm looking at you, Sally Forth — the new cartoonist will so transform the strip as to create a new entity. But the basic assignment is to keep the editors happy and the money rolling in, and the net result is a tired medium that skews older, and more irrelevant, every day.
Mind you, opening those 700 slots does not guarantee a freshness to the page. It's entirely likely that editors will fill them with established giants, and, if they go for a younger strip, odds are very good it will feature some sort of misanthropic talking animal in which the punchline of each day's strip is a variation on "You suck!"
Cathy brought a freshness to the comics page, and, if her voice and her act did not remain fresh for 34 years, she continued nonetheless to speak to a significant number of readers. More important from the point of view of the medium, the success of the strip meant that those same syndicate acquisition people who are now flooding the market with the aforementioned misanthropic talking animals then began looking for women cartoonists, opening the doors to some very talented people.
Some of whose work you occasionally see here, one strip at a time.
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