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...on the endings of beginnings

Sluggy Freelance is an online comic strip I have enjoyed reading for several years, although some of the experimentation that the author, Peter Abrams, has indulged in recently is not quite as entertaining. Not that I begrudge him his attempts at stretching his creativity, but much of the fun factor is missing.

Pete himself has recognized this, and he now has a co-artist/author who is publishing one strip a week set during the "bikini suicide frisbee days." An example of the spirit of those early days of Sluggy Freelance can be found in this particular strip:

Read the following strips to find the pleasant chaos that made it fun.

The early days of Bloom County have a similar, quasi-anarchic and amicably subversive feel that is so hard to capture and so easily lost.

Some call it "jumping the shark" enshrining an infamous episode of the television sitcom Happy Days when Fonzie performed a motorcycle stunt a-la Evel Kenivel by jumping his bike over a shark tank.

Somehow, the fun goes away.

The endings of beginnings and the loss of innocence and naivete occurs with almost everything, not just comic strips and television shows.

Sometimes the end of the beginning is noticed at the time it happens, sometimes it is not recognized until well after the change in spirit has taken hold.

As with any loss of innocence there is a wistful longing for the pure, artless, fresh fun that is no more.

Another beginning has sadly ended; the "bikini suicide frisbee days" of blogging are over.

I suspect those carefree times ended with the election of 2004, when it became more important to post politics than silly quizzes, and it became more important to bash the infamous MSM instead of continuing to build a true community of strangers who became friends who had never met.

Where does it go from here?

That is up to us to decide.

Perhaps we should try to recapture some of the fun, some of the unaffected guilelessness, some shadow of the spirit of our bikini suicide frisbee days not so long departed, but already dearly missed.

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