I sat on this story for a while hoping to get more details. Since Peter Zale’s creation is silently closing down, I’ll post what I do know. Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet will no longer be syndicated after Christmas 2005. Peter’s web site say’s he’s on sabbatical, but an article in the Salt Lake Tribune paints a picture that the syndicate (Tribune Media Services) cancelled Peter’s contract.
Where’s Helen? Before you start calling me and asking, Where’s “Helen – Sweetheart of the Internet,” here’s the skinny.
The syndicate that carried Helen has canceled its contract with Helen’s cartoonist, so we cannot purchase the comic strip any more.
From Peter’s web site regarding the end of Helen:
Our need to please, our need to have people like us and what we do is as much a lack of a strong center to our collective personality as anything else. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a good person, but, like the vast majority of people in the world, my core has spent a great deal of time drifting through life, trying to understand things that were impossible to understand and holding on to things ephemeral by nature, like other peoples’ opinions.
Whatever else this project has been, it has allowed me to see something of myself, and for that the time has been worth it. I may or may not achieve financial success with “Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet,” but I have achieved something of far more, if not far more difficult, importance.
TMS did not cancel my contract. I did not renew it on my own. I put that I was on sabbatical because I do plan to bring Helen back at some point in the future.
Peter E. Zale
A pity – many moons gone by and no sign of life yet. Suggest bigger storm and more lightning.
Actually 1+10 = a large casserole.