I just don't do comic strips like I used to.

I guess I blame the internet.  And by extension I blame the fact that I no longer get a daily paper delivered to my house.

I was laying in bed this morning thinking fondly on the days when I looked forward to getting home and seeing what could possibly happen next in Bloom County.  Bloom County was the pinnacle.  Berke Breathed's strip was socially relevant, absurd, hysterical and his story lines would often carry the reader along for weeks.

There were others that brought me back time after time.  Calvin and Hobbes, of course; and the best single frame comic in the history of print media, The Far Side.  All three of these comics had the heart-breaking good sense to quit while they were ahead.  (Although Bloom County kinda resurfaced as the tepid Outland - which raises the question that perhaps Breahted had already peaked but no one had noticed yet.  Outland was followed by Opus which I had never read a single panel of before looking for the link to cite this sentence.)

Some other strips got read regularly along the way, but none really had the drawing (pun intentional) power of the residents of Bloom.  We used to actually talk about these comics at school - what would Bill the Cat do today?  I laughed so hard, did you see yesterday?

Today I enjoy an occsional XKCD or Dinosaur Comics and for a while I tried to follow the plot on Achewood, but the fact is that even with RSS, I just don't have patterns in my life that compel me to slavishly follow any of them with the discipline that blew Bloom County off the page and into my life six days a week.