Forty-five years ago—on November 22, 1976—we were first introduced to Cathy on the funny pages…
The original Cathy strip ran until 2010 when we saw the eponymous character announce her pregnancy to her own mother. Guisewite had officially retired.
[W]hen the COVID pandemic hit in early 2020 she started drawing again. Cathy Commiserations was the result (recently compiled into the book called Scenes from Isolation).
GoComics interviews Cathy Guisewite about those 45 years.
You mentioned you weren’t going to draw again after Cathy ended in 2010—but then, COVID. What about that isolation prompted you to pick up your pen again?
When the pandemic hit, some found comfort in returning to their roots of baking and knitting. I found comfort in returning to my roots of dumping my angst on paper. Drawing Scenes from Isolation helped me keep my sanity and forced me to stop buying things online for at least a few hours a day while my hands were busy with colored pencils…
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If you launched Cathy today, what would you do the same? Differently?
I would want to make Cathy a role model of more victories, fewer defeats…
Read the full interview at the GoComics blog.
When, years and years ago, the editor of the Kenosha News summarily deleted CATHY from the newspaper because, he claimed, ‘she is irrelevant’, I began looking for comics online. So I guess in a way, I should thank him . . . and I think CATHY is still very relevant today. Which shows how things haven’t changed much, at least not for women.