Maybe it's because I'm a long time newspaper man, or maybe I just like quick jokes in a visual format, but I'm a big fan of newspaper comic strips.

There are times when I think I'm the only one. No one I know ever discusses any of the strips (and there quite a few still left), and they don't seem to have the cultural impact they once did.

I mainly read the strips in the Knoxville daily, though there are a couple I keep up with online. I'll admit that most of the time the best they get out of me is a smile, though there are times when I'll find myself laughing out loud when I get to the third panel punch line.

I bring this up because a comic strip called "Cul de Sac" ended its run last Sunday. It was a strip about little kids that owed a lot to "Peanuts," though there was a touch of "Calvin and Hobbes" in there. The strip had only been around about five years and had already won awards and the praise of other cartoonists, not a bunch known for hollow praise.

The strip ended because the cartoonist, Richard Thompson, has Parkinson's and he simply couldn't draw anymore. That's a sad reason for anything to end, but especially a comic strip, as your living and everything you love about it is tied up in your hands.

If you're lucky enough to not be sure what Parkinson's is, it's where you move uncontrollably and have a hard time with even the simplest tasks. Actor Michael J. Fox is probably the most well known person with it.

But we're here to discuss comic strips. When "Cul de Sac" ended, I got to thinking about other comic strips that have come and gone. The most famous is probably "Peanuts," though casual newspaper readers might not know this as the strip still appears in most daily papers.

But Charles Schulz died in 2000 and there hasn't been a new "Peanuts" strip (or Charlie Brown comics as most called them) since. There have been Charlie Brown comic books, but that's a completely different animal.

The above mentioned "Calvin and Hobbes" ran daily for 10 years, then Bill Watterson said, "I'm tired of doing this," and that was that. That also happened with "Bloom County" back in the 80's, though it popped up as a Sunday only strip for a while and Opus the penguin has appeared in children's storybooks off and on.

"For Better or For Worse," one of the few comic strips to run in real time, came to an end a few years ago, but like "Peanuts," it continues on in reruns.

"Boondocks" was a radical departure for the comic strip page. A strip about a black family living in suburbia, it touched on issues that probably made a lot of people uncomfortable. It became very popular, but the creator decided he didn't want to do it anymore and killed it off after a short run, though it did become a TV show for a few years.

When it comes to what's on the comic strip page(s) today, the best, in my ever humble opinion, is probably "Get Fuzzy," a strip about an immensely stupid dog, an egotistical cat bent on world domination (though he never leaves the apartment) and a bewildered owner who can't convince them he buys their food when they refer to the "magical food cabinet."

There are still a lot of old, out of date strips on the comic's page. Everything from "Beetle Bailey" to "Hagar the Horrible" to the long past its sell by date "Blondie." This has just about strangled the comic's page and guaranteed no new converts (the tottering newspaper world as a whole doesn't help) to three-panel humor.

A couple of comics, "Pearls Before Swine" and "Lio," make fun of these old comics, all of them well past a half century old, but it doesn't make any difference. To put it in modern terms, imagine if TV shows from the 1950's still dominated the airwaves, all of them ran by the kids of the original stars.

I guess (hope) there will always be comic strips as long as there are newspapers. As long as we have those two things I'll have a job (I hope) and desk calendars to get a quick laugh out of.

michael.thomason@advocateanddemocrat.com | 442-4575