Comic endings
 

For anyone who cares, tomorrow will mark the last daily strip of Fox Trot by Bill Amend. Starting 12/31, it will be Sunday-only. Sigh, what a great strip, I'll miss it (Sunday-only strips just don't have the bite that a daily does). You can read the final strip (and an archive of the last month I believe) here.

In related news, word is that For Better or For Worse is going to wind down as well. The story's gotten a bit labored as of late, but it still managed to keep my interest. Rumor has it that it might end with Elizabeth getting married, the final words being the strip's title.

For Better or For Worse was my childhood soap opera, every day in the funnies. Sigh.

Foxtrot was always great.

I still miss Bloom County. Outland and Opus suck(ed).

The author has some chronic neck problem that makes it hard to work. Too bad this strip can't go the cradle to grave Gasoline Alley route. If Elizabeth does get married, it will be to Anthony. Paul the constable is going to hook up with his old childhood friend who moved up north.

Fox Trot? Really? I shouldn't talk. I start the day with Rex Morgan.

Never cared for For Beter or Worse but isn't it the case that she's said for years roughly when it would end?

Any word on why Amend is going to Sunday only? Does he have other projects or just enough money to cut back?

Seems like he's just tired of it. I'm sure, like most artists with some sort of long running publication he'll find other projects to fill his time, but I don't think he's cutting back because of some specific other project.

I can't say I regularly read Foxtrot (I couldn't find a reliable RSS feed to put through Bloglines like the other strips I read) but I knew back in the early '90s I'd like it when a strip had a calculus joke and not only that but the equations shown were correct.

Ugh. I realy dislike Anthony, and think that Liz could do so much better. (i know Paul won't work out, but she was SO enamored with him. Her attitude toward Anthony seems to be a growing sense of "well, he'll do...sigh." As you can tell, I've followed this strip for years, with a mix of admiration and disdain.

Fox Trot has long been a favorite for me, but I think it's been a bit stale for a while. The un-aging characters haven't grown or changed, and the strip has been re-telling the same jokes for a long time. (often re-telling them in very funny ways, mind you.) I think it's fine to bow out before things get truly stagnant. (As much as I adored Peanuts, I think it outlived its shelf life by a good fifteen to twenty years.)

Okay, so FBOFW isn't going away just yet...it's changing. And changing oddly.

At some point, the characters are going to stop aging. And then, while there will be new strips with the characters now frozen in time, they will be interspersed with flashback strips with old storylines. Think 5th season of a sitcom. One day it will be, "Hey Michael, look at this old photo album I found while cleaning the attic" and the next it'll be whatever old story the photo album reminds them of.

Ummmmmm, k. I think I'd rather it just come to an end.

Will the characters be riding motorcycles over tanks filled with sharks?

Looks like I called that one.