After noticing my favorite quirky cartoon strip was absent again this week from Sunday’s Free Press, I felt the need to search for “Cul de Sac” online. I assumed the Freep (as it’s called in Detroit) had simply discontinued it, so I was saddened to learn that the comic’s creator, Richard Thompson, is unable to continue the cartoon because of Parkinson’s disease.
Cul de Sac, which began in 2004, featured the adventures of a four-year-old girl with appropriately wild ideas of the world and her neurotic older brother. Alice and Petey Otterloop’s lives were ordinary and outrageous at the same time. I often saw myself in her dumbstruck, exasperated mother. Kids can be incredibly dramatic, especially when they don’t feel they’re being taken seriously, and you know that everything is serious to a child. Thompson is an excellent illustrator, drawing expressive and messy characters so ugly they’re cute.
Thompson was initially excited about doing a final strip for the newspaper before resigning. He said he envisioned it as this:
Mom is reading to Alice. The story ends “And they lived happily ever after.” Alice reacts badly to this bit of fairy tale boilerplate. She goes off on a rant about what a boring, vague and unsatisfying way to end an exciting story that is and why do writers do that? It’s like they run out of ideas or something. Alice ends up in Petey’s room,of course. And in the final panel something funny happens.
I love it. It’s totally Alice, and to an adult, so true. But Thompson couldn’t get it drawn to his satisfaction. In the end, he went back to a strip from 2007 that he considers his best because “it’s got drama, comedy and meta-ness, and it makes a point that’s self-deprecating enough to be self-loathing.”
There were many times I could relate to Alice and Petey Otterloop, too. I’m going to miss them. If you will miss them, too, I’d love to hear from you!
By the way, Richard Thompson has a great blog where you can read more.