Cul de Sac–Revisited

Last year, I wrote that I found Richard Thompson’s daily comic strip, Cul de Sac, to be one of my daily guilty pleasures. Thompson, who found his calling in 2004 at the age of 47, is a 2011 Reuben Award winner for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

culdesacexit But sometimes, life isn’t fair. A baseball player might develop sudden blindness ending his career  (Kirby Puckett) or a physicist might lose the ability to move or speak (Stephen Hawking) or  in this case, a cartoonist may develop Parkinson’s Disease and be unable to draw his strip.

Back in July 2009, Thompson announced that he had Parkinson’s which he called a “…pain in the fundament.” Throughout most of this year, Cul de Sac has been reruns or guest artist drawing the strip, filling in for Thompson who is undergoing therapy and treatment.

In his March 25, 2012 blog post, Thompson announced that he would continue to write the strip and that children’s book illustrator, Stacy Curtis would ink the strip.  This is welcome news. Curtis is a brilliant choice to illustrate this award-winning comic strip and it means, in my opinion, that Thompson keeps control of his strip and doesn’t end up like Greg Howard, who created Sally Forth in 1982, but was eventually replaced as writer and artist by his syndicate.

I look forward to many years of reading this collaboration which will produce the wonderful strip that I’ve come to depend upon every day, like my morning coffee.