When It's Time To Go, It's Time To Go

Sometimes it's better to get out while you're ahead. Back in August, the creative genius behind the "Cathy" comic strip, Cathy Guisewite decided to pack it in. After thirty-four years of creating a daily comic strip of unparalleled humor and pathos, Ms. Guisewite put up her pen and paper and she also revealed that after three and a half decades of meeting newspaper deadlines she could not give time to her family and failed to meet her “personal deadlines” which made her take this decision of not to “procrastinate” any longer for her retirement. Take a moment to savor the unnecessary quotation marks.
She went the way of her idol, Charles Schultz, creator of "Peanuts." In this case, the quotation marks are necessary to set the title of the work apart, the work of a lifetime. With fifty years of syndication, Mr. Schultz created a world of happiness, fear, sadness, security and imagination. His comic inspired classic TV moments and a number of giant helium balloons that have appeared in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Cathy never did that.
But Jim Davis did. I mention this because Mr. Davis managed to do something that neither the queen of low self-esteem or Old Sparky did: He ran a strip on Veterans Day in newspapers across the country that shows a spider daring the pudgy orange cat to squash it. The spider tells Garfield that if he is killed, "they will hold an annual day of remembrance in my honor." The final panel shows a spider-teacher asking its students if they know why spiders celebrate "National Stupid Day." Garfield's creator said that the publication of this particular comic on Veterans Day was the "worst possible timing," and it came as a complete surprise since he had written the strip over a year ago. Davis said his brother served in Vietnam, and his son is a Marine who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he is grateful for the service of veterans, and called any offense "unintentional and regrettable." Feel free to figure out what those quotation marks mean.