There’s this one great quote on a despair.com product:
Quitters never win, winners never quit, but those who never win AND never quit are idiots.
Every now and then you run into people who just don’t know when to quit in time. One that keeps annoying a lot of people by refusing to quit – and at the same time inflicting untold damage to her party – is Hillary Clinton. I mean come on, it’s clear she should quite simply just drop out of the race as gracefully as is possible. But nooo, she vows to keep on fighting. Oh damn it, if the Republicans end up winning the general election – again – it’ll be at least partly all her fault for screwing with the Democratic nomination for so long.
And from this real life (tragi)comic case, we can make a smooth transition on to printed comic strips, because it’s easy to find more people from that field who refuse to quit in time. A prime example was Peanuts by the late Charles M. Schulz. It went on for literally decades too long. Piranha Club by Bud Grace is also way overdue for getting out of the papers and into the trash bin (the octopus theme is really beating a dead horse).
Then there are borderline cases like Patrick McDonnell, the creator of Mutts. Sometimes he’s stuck repeating the same stupid theme for weeks on end, but sometimes still manages to pull off great stuff.
Of course there are also comics that should never have been allowed in print to begin with, like “Auttajahai” in the weekly supplement of Helsingin Sanomat, NYT. Luckily I’m unable to find a digital example of this.
Luckily, there are people who do know when to quit in time. One of my favorites was Bill Watterson who drew the Calvin & Hobbes comic for 10 years. In that spirit, here’s one great Calvin & Hobbes-strip:
And of course there are strips that are still riding high, like Dilbert. But sometimes that feels way too much like a documentary than a mere comic strip..
