The End Of The Dance

This is a sad time. A few days ago I learned through the good offices of The Dilbert Blog that one of my favourite cartoon strips is coming to an end, at least as I know it.

I have long been a fan of Foxtrot. It's a gentle story of an American family, interspersed with oddly surreal moments. I realised a long time ago that, no matter how often I raved about it, it was just too American to get a run here in the UK, but that didn't stop the writers of the sitcom Our Family ripping it off wholesale for their early episodes.

Now, cartoonist Bill Amend (pronounced in typically ridiculous US style as 'Ay-mond') has decided to drop the daily strip cartoon and run Sunday-only strips. This is an incredibly brave decision. When cartoonists decide to retire a strip is is usually because, no matter what their stated reason, they have made more than enough out of the strip to never have to work again. Gary Larson could retire The Far Side on the back of huge book and merchandising sales. Bill Watterson and Berke Breathed never licensed Calvin And Hobbes or Bloom County, but both made enough through book sales around the world to give up on them. (It's true - every Calvin t-shirt you see is a fake). But it is hard to find a precedent for what Amend has just done.

On the other hand, Bill Amend has never done what you would expect. How many cartoonists nowadays would pull their strip's website because it was distracting them from the drawing? How many would close a mail service named after one of their characters? In these and many other ways, Amend has always bucked the trend.

So however much I will miss reading about Roger, Andy, Peter, Paige and Jason - and however much the likes of Pearls Before Swine may take the piss - I find myself hating Amend for what he has done, but admiring him for doing it.