I USED to like Cathy, back when she and I were much younger. However, I quit saying “ACK!” when I try on clothes, and she hasn’t. I matured, and she never learned to relate to her mother as an adult. Yes, her mom will always consider Cathy to be her little girl…but Cathy doesn’t have to RESPOND to her mom as a little girl.
I was never a big fan of this strip, but at least it was taught me about a lifestyle and mindset that I wasn’t aware of before and didn’t have any sacred cows. That’s more than I can say for Garfield, The Wizard of Id, Hagar The Horrible, Blondie, etc.
The best thing Cathy Guisewite could have done would be to expand her horizons a bit, explore a wider range of women’s issues (I know more than one person recommended experimenting with bisexuality), but there’s no way she would have stayed syndicated. Look how much heat the The Boondocks got for its ENTIRE existence for subjects that are, in retrospect, really nothing special.
I got the last book, about the wedding, and it was a blast (and from my experiences, all too true).
It’s a good time to be retired; I’m just not confident whatever replaces it is going to be any better. It’s just an incredibly lousy time for newspaper comics these days.
Damn, I was hoping it would be from Jean Teasdale. She loved Cathy.
Well it went out with a whimper. It’s a shame that such a good comic declined so much. And yes, it wasn’t good in the last few years but it was quite funny in it’s day 
In the last comic strip
It was revealed Cathy was pregnant with a girl
Here’s the last comic strip [courtesy of Go Comics]
I haven’t followed “Cathy” in years, but I saw on the news that the comic was going to end with Cathy announcing her pregnancy.
After years of tedious repetitive plots, she’s going to end on that cliffhanging bombshell? WTF?
Ecch, I’ve wasted enough thought on this.
From your link:
“As long as Aunt Fritzi is still around to give me my morning wood, then I am gold.”
Amen.
I expect we’ll see Jean Teasdale’s take on it eventually. You know how she is about meeting deadlines.
I saw it as more of a happily ever after than a cliffhanger. But then, I don’t normally give Cathy any thought; the only reason I even looked at the strip was because it made a rare appearance on the Comic Curmudgeon’s blog.
You knew less of the mindset of a single woman than that of a viking or a wizard?
How relevant are comics now anyway? It’s not something I have considered before; but I’m one of the huge masses of people who don’t bother with a daily paper anymore; unless it’s the Wall Street Journal that my boss lets me have when he’s not in the office.
Don’t get me wrong; There’s definitely a need for comics… but for me I’m more than happy to read them online with my other news. I use iGoogle and have frames dedicated to Questionable Content and to XKCD. Sadly I have one for Perry Bible Fellowship too, but don’t guess those are written anymore. Does anybody know?
Anyway, I guess I’m saying that I think newspaper comics will be going the way of the Dodo bird, and shifting more into an online format (or comic book format). Jeph Jacques has been supporting himself with QC for several years now on merchandise sales.
I still get my morning paper every day, and the comics are either the very first or the very last thing I read.
I’m not averse to reading them online, but I know of no place online that will collect and collate them like the newspaper does. And no, I’m not going to bookmark all my favorite comic strips and then spend 30 minutes a day clicking bookmarks and links so I can read the comics. That is why newspapers are sometimes better than teh intranets. Also, newspapers are better for wrapping fish and lining bird cages.
You have only to ask, and the SD shall deliver (even if you didn’t ask in the first place, the SD shall deliver): The Houston Chronicle comics page. You can even select a set to follow and create a single page you can bookmark with all your chosen comics on it.
There is one Cathy strip that I think is brilliant, both when it was new and in hindsight.
But context is important. Cathy’s friend Andrea was always the trendsetter, or at least the first follower of trends. In the '70s, she was a total “I am woman, hear me roar” feminist. Then, abruptly, in the '80s, she visited Cathy after a long absence. Cathy mused about Andrea, who was always so strong, so bold, so independent…A knock on the door, Cathy opened it, and was immediately knocked flat on her butt by Andrea’s humongous pregnant stomach. “Andrea who swore she’d never let a man touch her?” The Yuppie Puppy trend, perfectly illustrated in four line drawings.
that’s how I read mine now. I live in Houston, but it’s rare to be able to find the daily edition at all. The weekend edition doesn’t even have all the ones I do like.
So I created something like "my comics page"and bookmarked it, and I see the ones I like and a few I’ll always be curious about.
My local paper replaced Cathy with Dustin, which appears to be Zits+10 years from first impressions.
My local paper, at least not yet, hasn’t replaced Cathy with anything. They just added a little extra space between all the comic strips on the side of the page where it used to appear, which means that instead of all the comics on that page being precisely side-by-side they are slightly staggered, creating a zig-zag effect that looks like hell.
If you’ve read one Dustin comic, there’s no need to read it ever again. Here is how every single Dustin strip goes: Dustin is sitting around on the couch or otherwise being lazy. His dad makes an insulting comment about Dustin’s laziness, lack of drive, etc.
The Chicago Tribune has replaced Cathy with something that manages to be equally bad. (I don’t remember its name.) Both strips I’ve seen have been identical: a sleazy guy at a bar is trying to hit on a woman or a beer tap. In addition, the pencilwork is sub-Ziggy, as Comic Book Guy would say.
Agreed. It’s a classic sitcom ending. The others are a proposal, wedding, moving away or out, etc. You have to have some event like that to end a comic.
That said, I understand why you might think of it as a cliffhanger: having a kid should actually change Cathy, and could make her interesting again. On sitcoms, the point is that the big change helps make the premise of the show impossible to continue. But, with Cathy, that would be a plus.
the last Cathy comic sucked. Although the thought bubble coming from the fetus gave me a chuckle.
Dustin is definitely Zits grown up a few years - slacker teen turns into slacker young man, his GF leaves him, and he stagnates at his parents’ house.
I made a point of looking at the Tribune’s comic page this morning to check the new strip’s name, and forgot it completely. I even forgot the “plot” for today until you reminded me.