Cul de Sac (comic strip)
| Cul de Sac | |
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Cul de Sac (February 5, 2008)
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| Author(s) | Richard Thompson |
| Website | www |
| Launch date |
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| End date | September 23, 2012 |
| Syndicate(s) | Universal Press Syndicate |
| Publisher(s) | Andrews McMeel Publishing |
| Genre(s) | Humor, family life, children |
Cul de Sac is a comic strip created by Richard Thompson and distributed by Universal Press Syndicate to 150 worldwide newspapers.
The central character is four-year-old Alice Otterloop, and the strip depicts her daily life at pre-school and at home. Thompson, also known for his weekly Richard's Poor Almanac strip in the Washington Post, began Cul de Sac as a limited strip in the Washington Post in February 2004. In September 2007, Cul de Sac entered daily syndication with the Universal Press Syndicate. Digital distribution is by Uclick GoComics.
On September 23, 2012, Thompson, who had Parkinson's disease, ended production of the strip in order to focus on his health.
Universal Press Syndicate describes Cul de Sac as "a light-hearted comic strip centered around a four-year-old girl and her suburban life experiences on a cul-de-sac with her friends Beni and Dill, older brother Petey and her classmates at Blisshaven Academy pre-school. Alice describes her father's car as a Honda-Tonka Cuisinart and talks to the class guinea pig, Mr. Danders. She has the typical older brother who plays jokes on her, and she contemplates ways to keep the scary clown from jumping out of the jack-in-the-box with friends."
The first book collection of Cul de Sac strips, Cul de Sac: This Exit, was published September 1, 2008 by Andrews McMeel Publishing. It includes the pre-syndication Washington Post strips in color, as well as a foreword by Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes), who praised Thompson's work:
I thought the best newspaper comic strips were long gone, and I've never been happier to be wrong. Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac has it all—intelligence, gentle humor, a delightful way with words, and, most surprising of all, wonderful, wonderful drawings. Cul de Sac's whimsical take on the world and playful sense of language somehow gets funnier the more times you read it. Four-year-old Alice and her Blisshaven Preschool classmates will ring true to any parent. Doing projects in a cloud of glue and glitter, the little kids manage to reinterpret an otherwise incomprehensible world via their meandering, nonstop chatter. But I think my favorite character is Alice's older brother, Petey. A haunted, controlling milquetoast, he's surely one of the most neurotic kids to appear in comics. These children and their struggles are presented affectionately, and one of the things I like best about Cul de Sac is its natural warmth. Cul de Sac avoids both mawkishness and cynicism and instead finds genuine charm in its loopy appreciation of small events. Very few strips can hit this subtle note.
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