# Hallelujah: Cathy comic strip to be retired in October **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 12, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081 "2010-08-12T20:15:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2010, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/41 "2010-08-13T20:00:06Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > I think the real question is who will Stephen Pastis have to make fun of now. Oh, there’s plenty of material. Family Circus, Marmaduke, Blondie, Curtis, Red and Rover…I’d have to look at the Dallas Morning News for more, but those are just off the top of my head. Pastis has done several Family Circus parodies, I know that. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/42 "2010-08-14T03:50:21Z")
Monstera deliciosa writes: \> . . . I don’t see how these facts are vital . . . Knowing more facts is always vital. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/43 "2010-08-14T04:06:37Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Monstera deliciosa writes: > > \> . . . I don’t see how these facts are vital . . . > > Knowing more facts is always vital. Yes, but not to the point of nitpicking things to death. Back on topic: I wonder if _The Onion_ will have Jean Teasdale lamenting the demise of _Cathy_, seeing how it’s her favorite comic strip. (I too miss _Calvin and Hobbes_.) Now, if we could only get rid of _The Family Circus_… ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/44 "2010-08-14T05:40:49Z")
Cathy must have had an audience, but I’ll be damned if I could ever find one person to admit to it. That strip, along with For Better or Worse were the two worst strips for decades, and yet they continue this crapola. Thank the heavens for Cathy’s demise. PLEASE don’t let the strip rerun through syndication. The fact they are doing that with For Better or Worse is bad enough. Prince Valiant is still out there? I never understood who this comic appealed to. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/45 "2010-08-14T07:51:11Z")
Something that has always annoyed me is Guisewhite’s habit of jamming so much verbiage into the panels that there’s hardly any room for the artwork. It’s not funny - it’s just bad writing. You’d think with all the repeated “jokes” she would have learned to tighten it up, but in fact she got sloppier over time. Lazy. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/46 "2010-08-14T09:26:47Z")
> [@](#): > > Cathy must have had an audience, but I’ll be damned if I could ever find one person to admit to it. That strip, along with For Better or Worse were the two worst strips for decades, and yet they continue this crapola. The WORST strips? Do you not get Dennis the Menace, Marmaduke, and Family Circus? Blondie? Momma? Pluggers? I’d say that FBOFW and Cathy are/were…well, not BETTER, as that would imply that they are good. However, I’d say that Cathy and FBOFW don’t suck as much as the other comics I’ve mentioned. There’s no excuse for Blondie, or Dennis the Menace, or Marmaduke still existing. Cathy falls into this category of comic, because the strips in all these comics are essentially the same from one year to the next. The writers do occasionally make token efforts to include new elements in the strips (Dennis the Menace included non WASP characters, and one of Dennis’ friends is actually a GIRL) but these strips have formulas, and apparently most of their fans LIKE reading the same jokes over and over. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/47 "2010-08-14T12:03:25Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > > [@Ponch8](#): > > > > it recycles the same four or five jokes over and over. > > They added some new ones? When did that happen? > [@Frank](#): > > On October 4th, they begin to print Classic Cathy. Ha! You kids are too funny. > [@straight\_man](#): > > Read her interview about retirement [here](http://images.gocomics.com/images/gocomics/news/Cathy_QnA.pdf), as linked to by the [Comics Curmudgeon](http://joshreads.com/). She was almost making me sympathetic, up until she got to the men-just-can’t-understand-this section. I haven’t met any women who like her comics, either! Oh, now you just wait a minute. I’m sure there’s some 67 year old retiree from Kankakee, IL somewhere who, in between knitting sweaters for her grandchildren and gardening, reads Cathy comics and finds them just darling! > [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > I’ve now read a couple of articles about the retirement…the artist, who is 60, says that she wants to focus more on her daughter, who is 18 and going in her last year of high school. Guess what? It’s too damn late now. By the time your child is 18 (which would make Guisewite 42 when she had her), your job as a parent is essentially OVER. Or at least it should be over. Yeah, you can still give some support and advice, but the time to really spend a lot of time with your child is when the child is a CHILD. An 18 year old is legally an adult, and if you didn’t spend a lot of time with her when she was a baby and toddler and gradeschooler, you can’t make it up now when it’s convenient to you. > > OK, so that minirant doesn’t really have anything to do with the comic, but I do think that it says something about Guisewite and her priorities. Yeah, she should just give up on her children. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/48 "2010-08-14T12:32:24Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > You know what I hate about Cathy? It’s not the weigh issues. It’s not the shopping. It’s not the Mom. > > It’s the sweat. You know what I hate about Cathy? She had no nose, and then when she turns sideways suddenly the nose appears. Well is it there or is it not there? C’mon you can’t have it both ways. Now _the Family Circus_ ROCKS!!! You can have so much fun with the comic strip. _Cathy_ was a very funny strip. The word to focus on is WAS. If you read her early stuff, and you’re over 30 you’ll get it. It stopped being funny for me around 2000. But _Peanuts_ stopped being funny as soon as Charles Schulz kids grew up. The only consistantly funny strips I can think of were _Calvin & Hobbes_ and _the Far Side_ and that is only because the creator knew when to quit while he was ahead. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/49 "2010-08-14T12:52:12Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > Prince Valiant is still out there? I never understood who this comic appealed to. I don’t really read it, but the local paper does run it and I do look at it. Even if the stories are slow and ponderous, the artwork is really good. Shoe is the same way in that the artwork is good, but the pacing is really bad. ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/50 "2010-08-14T14:01:27Z")
Cathy managed to embody just about every single ugly stereotype about women. She’s materialistic, obssessed to the point of lunacy about her body, incapable of managinging her finances, greedy, shallow and simply boring company. Perhaps once upon a time the comic had something important to say about the lives of women but that was a very long time ago. ---
**Author:** ![Monstera\_deliciosa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monstera_deliciosa/32/109_2.png) [@Monstera\_deliciosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monstera_deliciosa)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/51 "2010-08-14T16:00:33Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Monstera deliciosa writes: > > \> . . . I don’t see how these facts are vital . . . > > Knowing more facts is always vital. I disagree. More facts are always good to have in a general sense; they aren’t always relevant to a particular discussion. Knowing when Ms. Guisewite’s birthday falls, and whether she was 59 years, 11 months and 8 days old, or 60 years old, wasn’t relevant. Neither was the fact that her daughter was adopted as an infant, rather than her biological child. To everyone else: Sorry for the hijack. I won’t continue it. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/52 "2010-08-14T16:14:46Z")
Yeps all around: > [@teela\_brown](#): > > I used to like it a little, but that all evaporated when she married Irving. The guy is a total ass, and he even got Cathy fired at one point on his advice as a downsizing consultant. Any guy who got me fired would earn undying hatred from me. > [@BobLibDem](#): > > Besides the very repetitive and limited material, Guisewite can’t draw worth a crap. (…) You’d think if you were in a profession for 30+ years, you’d bother to learn how to draw. > [@Monstera\_deliciosa](#): > > It just seemed to reinforce a view of women that I found tiresome, especially the self-hating obsession with weight, and her general lack of self-confidence. > [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > You know what I hate about Cathy? > > It’s the sweat. > > The little beads of sweat that fly off of her when she rants about something. > > It’s the only comic strip that’s ever grossed me out on a regular basis. > [@LavenderBlue](#): > > Cathy managed to embody just about every single ugly stereotype about women. The strip introduced a few “truths” that comics hadn’t previously discussed, such as: Serious problems with self-image Binge eating After those issues had been observed from a few dozen angles, there was no reason for the strip to continue. The artwork was hideous. The characters were repulsive visually and personally. I don’t even like thinking about “Cathy”. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/53 "2010-08-14T16:54:33Z")
> [@Baal\_Houtham](#): > > The artwork was hideous. The characters were repulsive visually and personally. I don’t even like thinking about “Cathy”. She wasn’t the greatest artist in the world but their are worse. I suppose she could’ve hired someone to draw Cathy better but I’m glad she didn’t. It’s too bad none of her earliest strips are in books, 'cause her drawings were really, really, really (did I mention really) bad when she first started. She got a lot better. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/54 "2010-08-14T17:42:31Z")
Has this thread really gone this long discussing tired, unfunny comics that have been wearing the same lame jokes thin with repetition for years without any mention of Garfield? ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/55 "2010-08-14T19:29:16Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > > [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > > > You know what I hate about Cathy? It’s the sweat. > > She had no nose And the hands.—the hands. No detail at all, just blobs, with bumps that might be fingers,but of wildly different lengths…they look like they were drawn by a child in kindergarten . ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/56 "2010-08-14T20:29:06Z")
> [@LavenderBlue](#): > > Cathy managed to embody just about every single ugly stereotype about women. > > She’s materialistic, obssessed to the point of lunacy about her body, incapable of managinging her finances, greedy, shallow and simply boring company. Perhaps once upon a time the comic had something important to say about the lives of women but that was a very long time ago. I agree. I always found the strip incredibly misogynistic, especially astonishing for being written by a woman. Cathy embodied the absolute antithesis of any woman I would ever want to be involved with. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/57 "2010-08-14T20:33:09Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > > [@Baal\_Houtham](#): > > > > The artwork was hideous. The characters were repulsive visually and personally. I don’t even like thinking about “Cathy”. > > She wasn’t the greatest artist in the world but their are worse. I suppose she could’ve hired someone to draw Cathy better but I’m glad she didn’t. It’s too bad none of her earliest strips are in books, 'cause her drawings were really, really, really (did I mention really) bad when she first started. > > She got a lot better. I’d ask for a link, but really I don’t want to see. Another of the strip’s innovations was the love/repulsion relationship between daughter and mother. I don’t think any comic had been so explicit about that social dynamic before. I’ve since noticed it in real-life many times, but Cathy was what stuck my nose in it originally and made me alert to it. ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/58 "2010-08-14T20:37:19Z")
“Cathy” fulfilled a very important function. It allowed newspaper editors to argue that they already had a comic strip drawn by a woman, so there was no need to go looking for another for balance :rolleyes: (Also “Jumpstart” for a Black cartoonist and “Mallard Fillmore” for a conservative point of view, with “Jumpstart” being the odd one out here as it is sometimes actually funny.) If you’re looking for a funny strip drawn by a woman and with a feminist point of view, I recommend “[Stone Soup](http://www.gocomics.com/stonesoup/)”. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/59 "2010-08-18T03:23:35Z")
“The Onion” notes Cathy’s demise: [link](http://www.theonion.com/articles/cathy-coming-to-an-end,17904/) ---
**Author:** ![Jolly\_Roger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/91b2a8/32.png) [@Jolly\_Roger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jolly_Roger)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081/60 "2010-08-18T22:14:13Z")
> [@flodnak](#): > > “Cathy” fulfilled a very important function. It allowed newspaper editors to argue that they already had a comic strip drawn by a woman, so there was no need to go looking for another for balance :rolleyes: (Also “Jumpstart” for a Black cartoonist and “Mallard Fillmore” for a conservative point of view, with “Jumpstart” being the odd one out here as it is sometimes actually funny.) > > If you’re looking for a funny strip drawn by a woman and with a feminist point of view, I recommend “[Stone Soup](http://www.gocomics.com/stonesoup/)”. I have to agree, and its sad. Cathy was a pretty bad strip IMO, and I have never met anyone who actually liked it. Surely they exist, but I’ve never encountered them. I hope that the space left behind from Cathy’s departure will be filled with a strip thats actually funny. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hallelujah-cathy-comic-strip-to-be-retired-in-october/550081.md?page=4)