Our long national nightmare is over…

`Cathy' comic strip ending after 34 years

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The comic strip "Cathy," which has chronicled the life, frustrations and swimsuit season meltdowns of its namesake for more than 30 years, is coming to an end.

Cathy Guisewite, the strip's creator, said Wednesday that deciding to end the comic strip was "excruciating." The comic has won several awards, including a 1992 National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program in 1987, and at its height appeared in 1,400 papers.

"It's just been really unbelievably agonizing to make the decision," Guisewite said in a telephone interview from her home in the Los Angeles area. "The strip has not only been the most astonishing form of therapy for 34 years, but doing a daily comic strip for the newspaper set a certain rhythm for my life."

The final "Cathy" strip, will run in newspapers on Sunday, Oct. 3.

If Jim Davis’ Garfield is Jeff Overturf’s bête noire, then Guisewite’s strip is mine. (Well, it and Mallard Fillmore.) I have never found anything remotely amusing about Cathy, and the thing that bugs the hell out of me is that despite this, I would still read the damn thing if I came across it in the newspaper.

That having been said, I salute Ms. Guisewite for over thirty years of entertaining…well, somebody out there. You’ve earned yourself a well-deserved rest.