Sunday morning comics are a bit of a dying art form. Thanks mainly to the interwebs killing off the newspaper industry, reading the comics on a Sunday morning is becoming more and more a thing of the past.
But maybe kids today are better off not reading the funny papers. Because, looking back on it, it's painfully clear they were filled with some depressing shit. Why the hell were we so eager for our parents to hand over the comic section? Oh look, Charlie Brown needs therapy! Neat!
The crap that we would read on our parent's bed while they read about the latest atrocities going on the world were really no different. In honor of that, we give you the seven most depressing comic strip characters ever:
7. Cathy: She's in her mid-30s, single, is a cat lady, and is quite frumpy. Nothing wrong with any of that, per say. But Cathy tends to drown her sorrows in chocolate and carbs and makes faces and says "Ack!" a lot, which is not a catchphrase that inspires confidence. She constantly battles with her love/hate relationship with food, her well meaning but annoying-ass mother, her failing love life and her job. Basically, Cathy is exactly like all of us, which is the most depressing fucking thing of all.
6. Jon Arbuckle: Like Cathy, Jon is in his 30s, is single, works a dead-end job, and is very much aware of the utter shittiness his life has become. What's worse is all he really has are his cat and dog. His dating life is non-existent. He constantly tries to ask out Liz, the girl he has a crush on, but always screws it up because he has zero self confidence. And when he does manage to get a date, it inevitably blows up in his face. You can actually see how sad Jon's existence is in the popular web comic Garfield Minus Garfield, where it's just Jon being Jon. And holy shit bananas, it's sad, creepy, and utterly depressing.
5. Garfield: Besides being a snarky dick and making people's Mondays more unendurable by declaring how much he hates Mondays on Facebook pictures and office coffee mugs everywhere (he's a cat, but he hates Monday just like you!), Garfield is a self-loathing, monotone talking, comfort-food-eating slob. He acts like a total asshole with his dog friend Odie, makes his owner Jon look like a dweeb, and eats lasagna all the goddamn time. If Garfield were human, he'd be the balding middle-aged fat guy working at the local comic book store.
4. Andy Capp: His name is a play on "handicap," he's unemployed, and he's a fucking drunk. And that's it. That's the entire comic strip. Every Sunday. A jobless dude in a newsboy cap in a bar with a pint of beer in his hand, rambling on about how he's just an unemployed dude in a bar with a pint of beer in his hand. Come to think of it, that's actually pretty awesome. Mom, I wanna be a jobless inebriated asshole who never contributes anything to society just like Andy Capp when I grow up!
3. Casper the Friendly Ghost: The character himself isn't depressing. He's quite cute and personable, actually. But keep in mind that with all the frivolous, lighthearted frolicking with the Ghostly Trio and Wendy The Good Little Witch, underneath all the joyful misadventures, is a dead portly little kid. THAT'S FUCKING DEPRESSING!
2. The Lockhorns: Leroy and Loretta Lockhorn are an elderly couple that do nothing but bicker about how much the other one sucks as a spouse. And basically every weekly single-panel strip had something to the effect of how women are naggy chatterboxes and shitty cooks and how men are fat, lazy, and stupid. They also frequently lament about how broke they are. She's a shopalcoholic and he chases skirts. Look at that panel on the left. That's the gist of every single Lockhorns strip. HEY KIDS, WANNA TOTALLY FUCK YOUR LIFE? GET MARRIED!
1. Charlie Brown: Charlie Brown's life is a miserable and gloomy existence. Look at every holiday Peanuts special that has aired, and it paints the picture of a dour, clinically depressed balding little kid. Merry Christmas, Bobby! You too are goddamn loser!
While Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer made you feel like you can do anything, despite the obstacles, the Charlie Brown Christmas special made you want to shoot yourself in the face. In the Halloween special, Charlie Brown fucks up a simple ghost costume and all the adults give him rocks -- actual rocks! -- instead of candy. His best friend has an oral and comfort object fixation; his little league baseball team always loses because of him, and he's constantly manipulated by that domineering little bitch Lucy.
The whole "attempting to kick the football thing" is Charlie Brown in a nutshell. Charlie Brown apologists will tell you the Peanuts gang is just a realistic view of how tough being a kid can be. If childhood is a perpetual struggle with always losing and never ever catching a break with anything in life no matter how hard you try, then sure, childhood is a fucking hoot! Charles Schultz was an asshole.
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