Soup to Nutz ends 18 year run

The notice from The Meadville (Pa.) Tribune:

Soup to Nutz ends its run in print syndication the week of May 21. The final daily is release date May 26.

Soup to Nutz
by Rick Stromoski
March 27, 2000 – May 26, 2018
Newspaper Enterprise Association/United Feature Syndicate/(Universal Uclick/Andrews McMeel Syndicate for UFS)
[daily reprints since March 5, 2018; Sunday reprints since April 1, 2018]

As Alex Dueben described the strip earlier this year in the introduction to an interview with Rick:

Soup to Nutz has its own sense of design, and it stands out on the comics page for the sense of humor, which has much more of an edge than other family strips, and for the character of Andrew, who remains unique.

The art style, different than other strips, did draw the reader’s eye to the strip. Then they stayed for the laughs after reading Rick’s gags.

Saying that the child Andrew is unique is probably understating it. Andrew may be singular in the history of comic strips. I can think of no character so purely innocent. The closest I can come is Walt Kelly’s small animal children; but even they could, and would, be mischievous and knew when they were being so. Andrew never has a malicious thought, not even a childishly impish one.

As noted above the strip has been in reruns the last couple of months. The last new daily ran March 3, 2018, while the last new Sunday ran March 25, 2018.  The Alex Dueben interview with Rick from March of this year gives no hint at the ending, but does show a sample of a graphic novel, in a dramatically different style, Rick is working on.

 

Rick remains involved in illustrating books, magazines, advertising, gags, and more.

Rick has spent much of this century volunteering as a National Cartoonists Society Board member in various positions. In a 2014 interview he relates some of the activities NCS Board members (and presidents) are concerned with:

Duties as membership chairman was to review applications for membership, establish applicants as professionals and co-ordinate with the committee that reviewed potential new members. As awards chairman I co-ordinated instructions to awards juries, answered untold questions from juries and applicants, oversaw the production of the actual awards hardware, actually designed the Gold Key award (Hall of fame) when it was reinstated , designed and issued certificates of nomination to the nominees and mailed out nomination ballots and final ballots to the membership. I’d also have to contact members in arrears with their dues and gently remind them we can’t do what we do without their help. When we roasted one of our luminaries for the saturday night show, for months before hand I would solicit and gather original art from the membership that gently skewered them, have them bound in a portfolio to present to the roastee as a gift from the membership.
As NCS President I would visit potential sites for our Awards weekend for up to 500 members visiting cities and 5 diamond hotels all over the United States. I would plan the convention meeting with hotels negotiating dates, food and beverage prices, accomodations, travel, VIP details, oversee the awards night, seek sponsorship and host several events and parties for sponsors and members. I’d also write a monthly column for the newsletter as well as oversee budgets, income and the organizations finances and investments. At times it felt like herding cats.

Whew! All that while continuing to earn a living with his illustration and comic strip gigs!

 

3 thoughts on “Soup to Nutz ends 18 year run

  1. Now that Soup to Nutz has ended for good. What could be the next strip to end in 2018? Get Fuzzy? Gasoline Alley? Big Nate?

  2. I went to the Andrews McMeel site (the only place I can find the strip online) and was surprised/disappointed to see that Rick didn’t do a farewell strip after his 18 year run. Maybe he did it back in March, but you can only see the last two weeks of strips on that site. Anyone know?

    Maybe DD, who has no end of free time, might give us print dinosaurs a primer on where to find newspaper-distributed comics online. If I don’t find it at gocomics or Comics Kingdom, I’m pretty well clueless.

  3. Rick did not do a farewell strip for the last new daily (March 3) or the last new Sunday (March 25).
    As far as I know there is no Soup to Nutz archive on the web, nor can it be accessed via The Wayback Machine.
    As I understand it a subscription to newspapers.com would give you access to the N. Y. Daily News of March 3, though not March 25.
    Elsewise you could find a newspaper that carried Soup to Nutz, say the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen, and subscribe to its E-edition to get the March 3 comics page: http://www.wiscnews.com/eedition/search/?l=25&sd=desc&s=start_time&f=html&q=soup+to+nutz&d1=2018-03-03&d2=2018-03-03&s=&sd=desc&l=10
    During my freebie thumbnail look at that page I neglected to get the gist of the last daily Soup to Nutz.
    On a Facebook page recently Doc Vassallo showed a sample of The Sunday N. Y. Daily News, by happenstance that was the March 25, 2018 issue. So I know the last Sunday Soup to Nutz deals with the doublespeak/alternative facts/unbelievable occurrences of today’s world with the only explanation being that Mr. Peabody and Sherman must have mucked up the timeline.
    Hey! Two separate Wayback Machine references in one response!

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