2000-02-14 - 06:08:36

today has been a mixed bag, oh, so mixed. grieving over a good man whose characters each exhibited a facet of the sorry bunch of dingy (ding like in bell) people we are and in the act of his cartooning made us in our minds say, "he's been watching me," and make us grin and even chuckly about it and ourselves. and so the cold rain of loss dripped tears in my heart. charles schulz, farewell and i hope to see you at the place i wish to go. when i do i will surrender my blanket and be linus no more. which led and leads me to think of all the wonderful cartoonists who made life at least bearable for each day. the most recent i think was the passing of walt kelly, the creator of "pogo" and the swamp critters. i had the good fortune back in the late 70's to be allowed to read two large books of "pogo" strips archives as you will. walt always amazed me how he could give being to the swamp critters who were smarter and kinder than we are. i don't remember what the particular sequence was, i think it was poking fun at our politicians and "pogo's" words in the final panel were, "we have met the enemy and he are us !" over the years that phrase comes to my mind time after time in relation to the things going on now. in my life of being devoted to comics there have been many talented philosophical (when you get down to it) cartoonists who saw deeply into the human psyche. in the present, one of my favorites, perhaps because i have "been there, done that 5 times are rick kirkman and jerry scott's "baby blues" one of those two just seems to me to have been required to be a woman or had the soul of his mother lovingly whisper into his brain some of the filled with meaning episodes that come from those two. "hagar the horrible,' "pickles," "geech," and so many more help get the day started in a good mood or a pleasantly thoughtful one. sheesh, for about 71 years from, bringing up father,"(maggie and jiggs) "gasoline alley" (skeezix and walt) "out our way" with major hoople on sunday and the one panel one in the daily news (cowboys and the tenderfoot) "mutt and jeff," "andy gump," "casper milquetoast. they all seem to depict my way of life, read the bad news and obits first and the comics last in order to face the realities with good will. i will always be one of the "katzenjammer" kids they were hummers. so for the next few days amongst the things i do interweaved will be memories of the "funnies"

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