...Or maybe it's not that sad after all. While most other dogs tended to display some form of talent or affection, Kipper was in that rare realm where he was as much use as a leaky beanbag. He took up a lot of room while continuing to leak product all over the place. Considering his limited uses, it's a wonder why he was there in the first place, other than to give Adam that Nuclear family sensibility.
Eventually, his regularity in the strip became fewer and fewer, and he was eventually regulated to making cursory appearances in the throwaway panels.
Another instance of why B&W reprintings of Sunday comics don't work. |
Laura's something of a sore loser. |
So what prompted his eventual removal? His redundancy revealed itself around the time that baby Nick appeared on the scene. There were two Sundays of him interacting with Kipper, but presumably, Brian Basset figured having two essentially mute characters was too much of a challenge, and from that point on, Kipper became little more than a fading memory.
Certainly something we'd all like to forget. |
This is pretty much the mental fate of all of Lovecraft's characters. |
I wonder if you consider Odie being one of the animals where we "weren't privy to the hidden knowledge of". If you count outside books like "Garfield's Big Fat Scary Joke Book" (there was one picture where Odie was thinking of something when taking a skeleton's leg bone away), or maybe in dream sequences, but as far as I am aware, Odie never really have thoughts.
ReplyDeleteAlso, would you touch on Lyman as one of the "Forgotten Characters"? It's probably one of the most famous forgotten characters since Garfield's popular, but it would be interesting to hear your take on Lyman (or maybe Jon's rarely-appearing neighbours Hubert and Rebecca).
Thanks for reading.