Nobody Claims Cartoonists Are Sane

I suppose there are those for whom the characters in long-running sitcoms take on a reality beyond the half-hour confines of the format, but not for me. Perhaps it's why I have never, as they say, "got into" them. To me the Seinfeld's, and Archie Bunkers, and the friends on Friends were always actors playing roles. The comics have always been different. Pogo and company, the Peanuts gang, the inhabitants of Dogpatch were real to me, and I imagined their lives continuing apart from the strip. Even now, when I pick up the comics page and find Satch is absent from that day's Get Fuzzy I imagine he has the day off, and wonder what he's doing.