u/Auir2blaze

At first glance it seems like a very odd way to end such a long-running strip. I'm sure a lot of readers would have had no idea that this was the final installment, because there's nothing to indicate that it is. (The last Boner's Ark, which ran the same weekend, showed the ark finally reaching land, for comparison)

The article says the art shown on the walls is from the granddaughter of the cartoonist (who had been drawing the strip for the final 20-plus years of its run), so I guess at least it had some personal significance. I think if I was reading this in my comics section back in 2000, I would have been confused by the apparent lack of any attempt at a joke.

The story also says the strip was only running in around 50 papers by the end. It's a bit interesting that King Features chose to scrap it, and not the Katzenjammer Kids, which I think was in even fewer papers by that time, but I guess they were reluctant to kill a strip that had been running since the 1890s.

It seems like a lot of these super-old strips eventually dwindle down to a small number of papers by the time they've been running for 80 or 90 years, but something like Blondie is an exception to that, still one of the most widely syndicated strips as it closes in on 100.

Harold Lloyd in High and Dizzy (1920)

Blondie's take on Britney Spears, from 2003

Profile of a 92-year-old Mort Walker from 2015

Roscoe Arbuckle breaking the fourth wall in 1917

The first week of Sherman's Lagoon daily strips from May 1991. Interesting Sherman himself doesn't turn up until the third strip

Conrad Veidt in The Hands of Orlac (1924)

Buster Keaton demonstrating his dance moves in The Cook (1918)

Two very different responses to 9/11 attacks

After an 87-year run, this is how Bringing Up Father ended on March 28, 2000

When Mort Walker held a contest in 1970 to suggest a name for a character in his strip Boner's Ark, he got 50,000 entries

Before she was famous, this movie star appeared in a promotional film for a department store. Do you recognize her?

Does anyone understand this 50-year-old Nancy?

The Vanishing American (1925) was one of the first Hollywood movies to be filmed in Monument Valley, more than a decade before John Ford first filmed there

Beetle Bailey's website (from 2001)

Heathcliff's new cologne brand (April 3, 2024)

Heathcliff's cologne, a running gag

After 9/11, Gary Trudeau pulled a week of strips making fun of President George W. Bush, but one strip ended up running in Tampa

10/13/2001: Heathcliff's cologne

Charlie Chaplin in 1917 and 1972

Louise Brooks in Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)