This sort of sums up the intellect of our favorite poster, who we all know goes by several other names.

So I thought it was extremely proper to add this to everything else that has been going on today.  Also, it is my favorite comic strip, and my favorite one from the strip.

Isn't it funny, I can post this one for HF.

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Amen to that Kathy! Leave it to one of this hobby's top rated ladies to lay it down like it is. This guy and all his immature friends must think this hobby is a one way street. That this hobby is all about them. That providers are just sex dolls with no lives outside the hobby. That you can mistreat and get away with it because that is what other guys do and get away with, disrespectin women and providers in particular. They are especially mean and vicious in packs. Get a bunch of guys like that alone together in a room and they are capable of almost anything. I think we have seen some of that bad behavior right here on this board in the past.

Kathy, I KNEW that there was something special I liked about you.  That particular comic is my all time favorite Bloom County/Outland strip, and one of my top two or three favorite comic strips of all time (the others being Gary Larsen cartoons).  I have that very strip framed and hung on my wall!

By the way, Berkley Brethard has just come out of retirement and has started doing a new Sunday comic strip, I forget it's name for the moment, starring none other than our old friend Opus!

Gary Larsen is also one of my favorites, a pure genius.

Yes I know he (Opus) is back from retirement, the strip is now just called "Opus".  It started again about 3 weeks ago, if you do a google search, you'll find the site I captured the cartoon from, you can actually buy this strip in a Lithograph, it's on my list.

I had the strip in my wallet for years, so I was happy to find his site.  Glad you like it, and I think it fit's our friend to a "T".....

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The new strip is named, simply, Opus. It started three Sundays ago. I figured is was worth $1 a week to read, so I subscribed to the Sunday paper for the first time in about 8 years.

Amen old hand....my experiences show the more you give...respect/attention/kindness to these ladies, it is paid back ten fold. That might sound niave in this world today but it is true, at least from my endeavours in this area.The original author of this thread is the PERFECT example of this.
An admitted Kathy addict ( for full disclosure).
Francisco

Happy Holidays to all.

This may be the best thread ever.

I started reading in the middle of the thread, and was going to cite the "How do you know if a woman has been working at a computer" (which is up next to my computer), only to find that this strip was already posted at the beginning of the thread.

When Breathed, Larson and Watterson retired their respective strips, I could hardly believe it. Wasn't there a law against such (arguably) treasonable activity? Had they been paid too much? Would it work if we threw more money at them? Alas, I realized that if they didn't wanna, they weren't gonna.

Well, we still don't have the Far Side or Calvin & Hobbes back, but we do have Opus. Something really good for the holiday season.

But I thought the writer for Calvin and Hobbes was dead??

No, I checked on google, and Bill Watterson is very much alive. Interestingly enough, there were a number of articles citing the end of the Calvin & Hobbes strip as an "obituary".

There's suppose to be some recent brain studies indicating that laughing triggers the same cells/neurochemicals as cocaine. No wonder the loss of these great strips has been such a bummer! We're counting on Opus to take up the slack.

i remember reading somewhere that the serotonin released from one minute of laughing is equal to the serotonin released from ten minutes of strenuous exercise

which should explain why i don't go to the gym that often

they felt that the quality of their work was diminishing. And rather than shuffling along in mediocrity, they decided to bow out with their integrity intact. I applaud their decision. Fortunately, the strips depended too much on the unique intellect of their creators that the syndicates couldn't continue to pass them off on an unsuspecting public by using another writer.

In Bill Waterson's and Berkely Breathed's case, they are two of a _very_ few cartoonists who own the rights to their creations. Most cartoonists have to sign over their rights to one of the big syndicates in order to get published in the first place. Personally, I think it sucks that you put your heart and soul into the one thing that you're really good at and then have to sign away ownership in order to be successful with it. Talk about being ripped off....

Anyway, Waterson and Breathed have total creative control over all aspects of their respective strips. That's why you will never see a Hobbes plush doll. Bill Waterson cringed at the possibility of a toy store full of Hobbes. When his syndicate threatened to do it anyway, he demanded that they return all rights to him or he'd stop drawing immediately. Knowing that the strip was dead without Waterson's genius, the syndicate complied.

I pity the poor strips that suffer in purgatory. I mean, look at Nancy, Gasoline Ally, or, dare I say, Peanuts. I hate to put Peanuts in the same category as the first two, but Charles Schultz is dead! Let his strip go and give the space to some daring young cartoonist who's got something funny or introspective to say.