Published in more than 2,600 newspapers reaching 355 million readers in 75 countries and 21 languages, the final daily strip will appear on Monday, Jan. 3 and the last original Sunday strip on Feb. 6. He has said that when he goes, Peanuts will go with him. So falls the curtain on another popular strip, just the latest in a long line of surprise retirements of toons seemingly still fresh and in their prime. Up until then, the notion of a cartoonist taking such an extended break was unthinkable, and when they did opt for a vacation they simply worked many weeks ahead of deadline to produce enough strips to cover for their absence. The landscape seems to have changed for the new generation.
Comic strips are serious business.
Each year syndicates receive more than 4,000 proposals for new strips and out of those only about 15 will ever make it into print, and only three or four will ever survive beyond their fifth year. And in the end, Breathed, Larson, and Watterson could well afford to walk away. Each became multi-millionaires who chose to answer the call to other artistic endeavors. For Berke Breathed, Bloom County brought instant fame and a Pulitzer Prize as well as the wrath of Garry Trudeau, who thought that it bore to close a resemblance to his own strip. A few years later the hunger that drove Breathed began to wane.