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Jan Eliot Retires, Stone Soup Ends

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Jan Eliot has announced the end of her Stone Soup comic strip:

Dear gentle readers…

For those of you who saw this Sunday’s strip, I know you can see that I have decided to retire Stone Soup. I can’t imagine turning the strip, which is so personal to me, over to anyone else, and my syndicate is not planning on running reruns. The last Stone Soup strip will appear on July 26 [emphasis added], when I will officially jump off the funny pages. My book collections will still be available for a while (Amazon and elsewhere) and GoComics will be running Stone Soup Classics for a long long time.

Read Jan’s full statement.

My Stone Soup details run as the following:
Stone Soup dailies November 20, 1995 to October 17, 2015
Stone Soup Sundays November 26, 1995 to July 26, 2020(projected)

Jan states she has been syndicated for 25 years, but her Stone Soup grew out of earlier local comic strips from 15 years before. “Patience and Sarah” began appearing in the weekly Willamette Valley Observer and that transmogrified into “Sister City” for the Eugene Register (both Oregon). The final evolution was the syndicated “Stone Soup,” though Jan never stopped evolving as a creator.

 

 

Stone Soup books by Jan Eliot

We wish blue skies for Jan, and earnestly hope to see occasional cartoon art from her.

 

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Comments 30

  1. With Stone Soup ending after 25 years, it joins these other newspaper comic strips that ended in 2020 to date: Ask Shagg, The Pajama Diaries, Retail, Moose and Molly, and Cats With Hands.

    Get Fuzzy hasn’t had an official end of the strip announcement to date with all daily/Sunday rerun mode still going since April 2020. And I think fresh Gasoline Alley strips will resume to tie in with an arc for Skeexix’s 100th. birthday (2021) before 2020 ends if Jim S. doesn’t officially retire and officially end the strip that’s now in its second rerun arc mode with current copyright date (mixed in with Sunday reruns off and on).

  2. Please tell me there will be more collections published!

  3. I am saddened by this news as Stone Soup is one of my favorites. In these trying times you have already bridged many gaps and added so much. The Habitat for humanity segment, the inter-racial couple and of course the fact that one of your characters is a police officer. My best wishes go out to you on your retirement. Stay safe, wear a mask but travel as much as you can. Good luck and thank you for all these years of entertainment.

  4. Please email me when I can purchase the final edition of your stripes. Our local papers are not available within a 45 minute trip and I can’t get used to getting them on line. I don’t want to miss the final installments

  5. I wish you happiness in your retirement but am so saddened by it. I looked forward daily to read Stone Soup and will miss it.
    Best of everything to you and yours.

  6. Enjoyed your work. Thank you. I’ll have to try and find some of your books to preserve the memories. Now, enjoy your retirement.

  7. Every Sunday I’m reading my Sunday paper on the coach.And the first thing I grab is the Sunday Comics. I also have to share it with my husband. I LOVE STONE SOUP. We all can relate to it , I laugh and agree. I will miss it so much. Thank you

  8. I was an August baby many years ago, so I just adored the
    “You Gotta Love August” strips and cut out most of them
    and added to my Scrap Booking album.
    Thanks for the warm, funny, poignant years of cartooning,
    Enjoy retirement, stay healthy, will miss you!

  9. Thank you for many years of laughs. Enjoy your retirement. PLEASE publish more collections! PLEASE consider us old fogies and publish hard copies, not just Kindles versions!

  10. One of my favorites is leaving; it is a sad day but one that brings back warm feelings. My Sunday ritual is no longer. The cartoon section is the last I read in the Sunday paper and your cartoon is the last item I read – I always saved the best for last so I had something to look forward to while reading the paper and it helped set off the week ahead in a positive manner.
    Thank you for your years of enjoyment. Enjoy retirement and watching nature unfold in small and miraculous ways.

  11. Thank-you so much for your comic strip. You will be missed by me, my husband and my family. I have most of your books. Please keep publishing them. You will be greatly missed!! ?????????

  12. I love this comic strip family and I’m sorry to see them go. Thanks for the laughs, the heart, the inclusiveness, and the kindness.

  13. I am going to miss your family every Sunday. They were so much fun to keep track of. Best to you in your retirement.

  14. Sorry to hear you are retiring Stone Soup, but you deserve your R&R. Thank you for so many years of absolute enjoyment, truth among siblings and families, and HUMOR. Your comic was always the first one I read. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Enjoy your retirement. ?

  15. We are sorry to see the end of your comic strip. We’ve enjoyed it for many years. Best wishes for a happy and healthy retirement.

  16. Dear Ms. Elliot,

    I am a confirmed reader of the comics–since I was a young kid! Now I am 80 and I still subscribe to the newspaper and I still read the comics first every day! Your strip was truly a favorite. Each character very much his/her own person. Besides being so charmingly funny, your work also has so much heart–a beautiful combination. You will be missed! Enjoy every day of your retirement. All best wishes, Judy Conrad

  17. So happy to have gotten to know all her wonderful characters over the years we have a original thanksgiving day strip in our hallway. We’ll cherish that art work and the wisdom and love she has shared. Best to you and thanks

  18. Thank you, Jan, for your stories the past 25 years. I have enjoyed the adventures and will miss it very much. But, I do understand, as my own husband has been a comic book artist since the late 1990’s, and it’s a grueling job. Enjoy your retirement, but know you will be very, very, VERY missed.

  19. I have loved Stone Soup and its characters and will certainly miss it! Please tell me if there will be a “Complete” Stone Soup collection published for purchase in book format (not ebook or kindle) and if so, when? My best to Jan – you certainly deserve a wonderful retirement.

    One confusion – at first when I read in the strip “we are all being laid off” and “it wasn’t a dream”, I thought Jan had been laid off and wondered if other cartoonists had also. Now I see it was the characters being laid off, and Jan put herself into the strip to announce her retirement. Still makes me sad. You and the whole Stone Soup family will leave a hole in my day and a space in my heart that will be hard to fill.

  20. One of the best comics ever.I will really miss the Sunday comic and being able to go back and read teh reruns of older comics.
    May you have a great retirement.

  21. Dear Jan,
    Thank you so much for the wonderfully insightful stories you have given us! You may remember encountering me walking my miniature dachshunds years ago in the neighborhood (I remember your schipperke.) Although I relocated long ago to the East Coast for family reasons, reading your strip in the Philadelphia Inquirer has always kept me connected to “home”. I can’t tell you how much I’ll miss all the characters you brought to life. Here’s wishing you happy trails, wherever your future may take you.

  22. I see that a previous poster and I have the same Sunday ritual: read comic section last, and leave Stone Soup until the very end. I am really, REALLY going to miss this sweet, sharp, funny, insightful and relatable comic strip, but at the same time I am excited for Jan. Most people don’t allow themselves the opportunity to do what they truly want to, far less give themselves permission to chase the dreams and desires of their inner nine year old; I am cheering her on!

  23. I am so sorry to see Stone Soup is ending. It has always been one of my favorites. Good luck to you in your retirement. You will be missed.

  24. Just one of my most favorite comic strips that I always looked forward to reading. You always “hit-the-nail” on the head with your subject matter. A wonderful family-oriented strip. We will miss you. Thanks for the memories.

    Enjoy your retirement.

  25. So sad. ? Stone Soup is my very favorite cartoon. I hate that it won’t be around anymore.

  26. I thank Jan for easing us into her retirement. A a person of the same “wise age”, I fully endorse the value of retirement. Enjoy it.

  27. Ms Eliot many thanks for ur many years or entertaining me and my family! We will miss ur efforts and good humor in our life ?.

  29. Jan, thanks for all the years of laughs, sighs and cries.
    We’ll miss you and the family as they’ve become so much a part of our weekend.
    Enjoy retirement, I hear there’s an Nap for that!
    Fondest regards, ???

  30. Dear Jan,

    Whoa. Wait. What!! I don’t believe it!! What about August? What about the octopus? I’m not sure that I can make it through this year without you! Please say that you’re really just vacationing and will be back.
    I will miss you if you go.
    Thank you for being a voice for home life and semi-sanity.
    Thank you for being a friend.

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