Cul de Sac is an American comic strip created by Richard Thompson. It was distributed by Universal Press Syndicate/Universal Uclick to 150 worldwide newspapers from 2004 to 2012. The central character is four-year-old Alice Otterloop, and the strip depicts her daily life at pre-school and at home.
Publication history
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.
Guest cartoonists and final strip
On July 16, 2009, Thompson announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a problem he described as "a pain in the fundament", which slowed him down but did not affect his drawing hand. He took a hiatus from the strip. During the hiatus several other cartoonists stepped in to draw the Cul de Sac characters. The guest artists were Michael Jantze, Corey Pandolph, Lincoln Peirce, Stephan Pastis, Ruben Bolling and children's author Mo Willems. Upon Thompson's return to Cul de Sac on March 26, 2012, it was announced that children's book illustrator Stacy Curtis would become the inker of Cul de Sac. On August 17, 2012, Thompson announced that due to health issues he would be ending his work as a comic-strip creator, with his final Cul de Sac being published on September 23, 2012.. While Thompson had originally planned to draw a final strip for the comic himself, one day before its previously announced publishing date he posted a message online, stating, "Spoiler alert – i couldn’t draw a new Sunday so tomorrow’s is a repeat too. Sorry! I’ll do better next time." That strip was a rerun originally published on February 18, 2007, which had also appeared on the back cover of the first book collection, Cul De Sac: This Exit'' in 2008. In it, Petey explains to Alice how comic strips are "a mighty, yet dying art form." Thompson died at 58 on July 27, 2016.
Characters and story
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." ;Alice Otterloop ;Petey Otterloop ;Madeline Otterloop ;Peter Otterloop ;Dill Wedekind ;Beni ;Ernesto Lacuna ;Viola D'More ;Marcus DeMarco ;Ms. Bliss ;Mr. Danders ;Andre Chang ;Loris Slothrop ;Nara ;Sofie ;Kevin ;Uh-Oh Baby
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, 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.
A second collection, Children at Play: A Cul de Sac Collection, was published in 2009 by Andrews McMeel. It features a foreword by writer-artist Mo Willems. A treasury book, Cul de Sac Golden Treasury: A Keepsake Garland of Classics, was published July 6, 2010 by Andrews McMeel. It features strips from the previous two book collections along with the early strips from the original run in the Washington Post. The book also features captions with additional insight or commentary written by Thompson himself. Writer Charles Solomon praised the new book in his review for the Los Angeles Times, stating "Cul de Sac proves the comic strip remains a viable art form while bucking current trends". A third book of strip reprints, titled Shapes & Colors: A Cul de Sac Collection, was released on December 14, 2010. A fourth, The Mighty Alice, was released May 8, 2012, and features both the daily strips and Sunday installments in color. After the strip's run ended, a two-volume book collecting the entire run of the strip and selections of early Washington Post strips, The Complete Cul de Sac, was released on May 6, 2014.
''Cul de Sac'' animated
A series of Cul de Sacanimated shorts, produced by RingTales, are hosted by Babelgum. These shorts are 30-second to minute-long animated versions of the comic strips. Thompson's wife provides the voice of Madeline Otterloop, Alice and Petey's mother. Thompson has said that one of the kids is voiced by an adult.
