Cathy Guisewite’s Cathy, the comic strip that is basically Tina Fey’s 30 Rock character, is ending its run after 34 years on Oct. 3. And while the strip was always about a straight woman and her relationship with men, work, food, and fashion (and, most importantly, herself), it was also always the first strip I flipped to when I was a teenager and my parents still had a newspaper subscription. It was a pre-Sex and the City piece of pop culture that, for whatever reason, I could always relate to with its pseudo-feminist and macro-realist bent.
L.
‘Cathy’ ran for 30 years.
‘The Far Side’ and ‘Calvin & Hobbes’, for 10.
It’s true the good ones always go first.
Ggeekboy
@L I agree. I never got Cathy, found it to be more annoying than anything. First comic I checked was Foxtrot and Dilbert (was a geek at a young age).
Tangelo
I always loved Cathy. She will be missed.
L.
@Ggeekboy: Oh, yes – Foxtrot was fun too! (Dilbert I found funny, but quickly repetitive. Still, it has its moments.)
Michael
When you parents asked what you were doing, you said; “I’m relating to a comic strip with a pseudo-feminist and macro-realist bent.” No wonder they canceled the newspaper subscription.
L.
@Michael: Well, that would still be a better answer than saying, “I’m relating to a comic strip with a mean, manipulative, pizza-chomping fat feline” 🙂
7
Never liked Cathy. Probably because I hate my mother.
Queer Supremacist
@L.: Maybe the bears and chubs could relate to that one. 😀
L.
@Queer Supremacist: I’m no twink by *any* criterion you’d care to use, but I still hate the bloody clawy thing 🙂
Zach
@L.:
Some creators know how to go out on a high note.
Though that’s not really a commentary about Cathy, which I think was thoroughly mediocre from its beginning. But there’s quite a few good comics that steadily deteoriated before the plug was pulled.
L.
@Zach: Ah well – I too thought Cathy sucked early on. But it is, I guess, a sad rule of the genre that the longer they run, the worse they get, and the more self-referential and irrelevant.
I think ‘Peanuts’ is the perfect example of that rule. It was brilliant, truly brilliant, for at least ten years, and then just went on its own momentum, stuck into its own world, never changing.
Watterson and Garson knew they would be getting on that slope should they keep going at it, and decided the little creatures had done nothing to deserve it, so they had the balls to stop when they felt there was no point to get to anymore, and I respect (and hate :)) them for that.
Doonesbury is a rare beast that goes on while keeping its splendid form, but that’s because it’s more editorial than self-contained, so new material offers itself and prevents it from going stale.
Joe
Never liked Cathy. I stopped reading the comics when they finished “The Far Side,” “Calvin & Hobbes” and “Bloom County/Opus”
Sapphocrat
I never got “Cathy” — but then, as one who was delighted by the dawn of “women’s lib” while still a wee child, I still don’t get “postfeminisim,” either. (Seems like a synomym for “self-subjugation” to me.)
Thanks for the “ending its run” link, Queerty; now I understand what it was supposed to be about, and why, while I didn’t find it funny, I found it earnest enough not to hate it.
Ryan
I think you need to amend that title to “pathetic gay men over 50 mourn”.
Jeffree
I too never saw the humor in Cathy.
Was there gay subtext in the comic I missed out on?
I just saw lots of whining and body image issues, plus too much male.ba.shing going on.
Blaine Ward
@Ryan: Just wait till you turn 50, you insensitive jerk!
Ryan
When I’m 50 I still won’t like Cathy.
Blaine Ward
@Ryan: You can like or dislike what you want but you don’t have to be a jerk about it. Just because you don’t like something, it doesn’t mean that no one else can like it. And it certainly does not mean that they are pathetic for liking something you don’t like. Get it?
Chris
For me, Cathy was like some annoying fag hag at the office that you hide from in order to avoid her never ending whining and self-pitying.