Is this the end of the story? Possible updates in Comments…
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Leave it to Len and Abby to get neurotic about their cat’s neuroses.
Edge City was originally syndicated by King Features, this story arc was first published in 2009, but the GoComics archive is entirely a retrospective re-run collection, beginning in May 2016, four months after the last new strip appeared.
Yes, and… .?
Are you saying the storyline isn’t fun or interesting for us to revisit today?
Then GoComics is putting in some effort, either finding old ones to rerun that will be date-coordinated (month and day), or editing the graphics to add in the correct current dating.
Yeah, I wouldn’t say the age of original publication of this series makes it irrelevant or uninteresting.
At most, it explains why the focus is singularly on Prozac, and not the larger class(es) of related meds that have been developed later.
Before my comment @2, I had expected to find the original arc in an online archive (in order to embed the next strips), but Comics Kingdom normally evaporates anything that no longer has a current publishing contract, and the GoComics archive does not index the dialog and is therefore unsearchable. Evidence suggests that GC is releasing the original (unedited) strips in sequence.(†) The GC run should continue until about 2031, and then recycle to the earliest strips.
P.S. (†) – This year GC had to skip Feb. 29th, because the leap years are not in sync, and there was no strip for that date in 2009. Similarly, last year’s strip for 29-Feb-2008 was omitted from the GC archive, because GC didn’t have a day for it in 2023.
P.P.S. I was astonished to discover that Edge City is running in disjointed parallel both at GoComics and at Comics Kingdom. GC is currently rerunning Edge City strips from 2009, and Sunday strips appear on Fridays, so today’s strip (for Saturday, 27-Jun-2009) was indeed the end of the Prozac arc. The strip that will appear on Saturday (originally dated Monday, 29-Jun-2009) starts a new arc about Facebook. :-(
Comics Kingdom is currently rerunning Edge City strips from 2004, and is three days out of sync, but that keeps the Sunday strips on Sundays. My guess is that they kept the strip online because the new CK website markets print copies, starting at over $100 each.
This seems like one long — too long — commercial for Prozac.
Prozac (fluoxetine) was the first of its family (SSRIs) to hit it big, after being introduced in (?)1988. It made a big cultural splash. I’m getting two book titles confused now — one was “Prozac Nation” by Elizabeth Wurtzel, a memoir which, AFAIR, both celebrated and warned against the drug. (And it was adapted into a movie with some big names.)
But there was also a bizarrely pro-Prozac book by maybe a psychiatrist guy who also fancied himself a social commentator. It said that in some cases it was a miracle, like a personality transplant in patients who had been crippled with social phobia / shyness and now were huge best-foot-forward american-dream success stories. His let-me-make-some-warnings chapter was — as I suppose I am distorting in memory — about the social/political need to maybe curb the availability of people to turn themselves into winners artificially and thereby distort society.
So with that atmosphere, it’s not surprising this arc from whenever you said it was, would (as Deety observes) focus on this chemical and not say “antidepressant” generally or maybe “one of those new line of antidepressants”.
(Does anybody remember the older term “mood elevators”?)
As we’ve discussed before, my understanding is that GoComics doesn’t curate or otherwise organize the strips that run. They take what the source sends each day and puts it in the framework. Assuming the original syndicate, King Features, is the supplier then they’d be the one. That could explain the difference between GC and CK, as the syndicate might prefer different runs as to not compete.
@ Brian (10) – Anything’s possible, this is simply the very first comic that I have discovered running on both of those websites at the same time. GoComics often leaves a expired strip in its archive indefinitely, but Comics Kingdom has tended to flush expired strips (or ones that have changed syndicates) very quickly, and in some cases unceremoniously rudely, just days after the expiration (“Retail” is a prime example).
“mood elevators” … Does anyone remember the term “Mother’s Little Helper”?
It appeared to me the comic was a satire of the medication culture of its time. I thought it should have gotten a little disclaimer recommending you not give your cat Prozac, but I guess I’m not really surprised to find this recent article suggesting you should…
A few Tribune strips run on both platforms, notably Gasoline Alley and Dick Tracy. Both sites carry the current strips. Tracy is linked from the A-Z page on Comics Kingdom, but GA isn’t. You can find it on some client sites, like Seattle Times. You can also create a link from the main CK site.
May be a duplicate – posted, seemed to post, but disappeared.
Mark In Boston – Yes, I remember that term!
Re: “Mother’s Little Helper” – I thought I remembered hearing the phrase in a song by some obscure group, but it turned out to be a title from The Rolling Stones.
Miltown, or Meprobamate, came about in the mid 1950’s. It was one of the very first “tranquilizers”. It was often prescribed to anxious housewives and soon gained the nickname “Mother’s Little Helper” and inspired the Rolling Stones song. Librium came along around 1959 and Valium around 1963.
Valium reminds me of my friend, let’s call him Twitch, who began taking it in the 1970’s and found it helpful. He moved to Hungary for a couple of years to study the music of Bela Bartok. At that time Hungary was still a satellite of the USSR and as such refused to recognize Western patents, so just about any drug from the West was available in a Hungarian generic version.
He asked his Hungarian doctor if he could get a prescription to Valium. The doctor said “I can prescribe anything you want, but I don’t know what Valium is. Do you know the pharmacology name?”
Twitch was pretty sure he knew the name. “Chlorpromazine.” “Oh, you can get chlorpromazine here, no problem,” said the doctor, and gave Twitch the prescription.
It was a very strange evening for Twitch. He went with friends to the ballet, sat down and for two solid hours did not move or take his eyes off the stage.
He decided that Thorazine was not really for him, and resolved to be more careful about pharmacology in the future. And he memorized the word “Diazepam.”
Jackie is just speeding away
Thought she was James Dean for a day
Then I guess she had to crash Valium would have helped that bash
Said, “Hey, babe,
Take a walk on the wild side.”
I said, “Hey, honey,
Take a walk on the wild side.”
I had a lot of trouble finding Tylenol here in Germany, even when I gave the pharmacist the generic name “acetaminophen”. I later discovered that in Europe, the alternative generic name “paracetamol” is used. Both names were derived as abbreviations of the same chemical formula: para-acetylaminophenol.
@Kilby 20: Do you mean to say that for once the Germans decided to go with the SHORTER word for something?
I was aware of “paracetamol” from seeing videos from UK providers.
@ MiB (21) – Don’t give the Germans credit for the shorter name. Once “Paracetamol” had been adopted into the “British Pharmacopoeia” (in 1963), the rest of Europe simply followed that lead.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Leave it to Len and Abby to get neurotic about their cat’s neuroses.
Edge City was originally syndicated by King Features, this story arc was first published in 2009, but the GoComics archive is entirely a retrospective re-run collection, beginning in May 2016, four months after the last new strip appeared.
Yes, and… .?
Are you saying the storyline isn’t fun or interesting for us to revisit today?
Then GoComics is putting in some effort, either finding old ones to rerun that will be date-coordinated (month and day), or editing the graphics to add in the correct current dating.
Yeah, I wouldn’t say the age of original publication of this series makes it irrelevant or uninteresting.
At most, it explains why the focus is singularly on Prozac, and not the larger class(es) of related meds that have been developed later.
Before my comment @2, I had expected to find the original arc in an online archive (in order to embed the next strips), but Comics Kingdom normally evaporates anything that no longer has a current publishing contract, and the GoComics archive does not index the dialog and is therefore unsearchable. Evidence suggests that GC is releasing the original (unedited) strips in sequence.(†) The GC run should continue until about 2031, and then recycle to the earliest strips.
P.S. (†) – This year GC had to skip Feb. 29th, because the leap years are not in sync, and there was no strip for that date in 2009. Similarly, last year’s strip for 29-Feb-2008 was omitted from the GC archive, because GC didn’t have a day for it in 2023.
P.P.S. I was astonished to discover that Edge City is running in disjointed parallel both at GoComics and at Comics Kingdom. GC is currently rerunning Edge City strips from 2009, and Sunday strips appear on Fridays, so today’s strip (for Saturday, 27-Jun-2009) was indeed the end of the Prozac arc. The strip that will appear on Saturday (originally dated Monday, 29-Jun-2009) starts a new arc about Facebook. :-(
Comics Kingdom is currently rerunning Edge City strips from 2004, and is three days out of sync, but that keeps the Sunday strips on Sundays. My guess is that they kept the strip online because the new CK website markets print copies, starting at over $100 each.
This seems like one long — too long — commercial for Prozac.
Prozac (fluoxetine) was the first of its family (SSRIs) to hit it big, after being introduced in (?)1988. It made a big cultural splash. I’m getting two book titles confused now — one was “Prozac Nation” by Elizabeth Wurtzel, a memoir which, AFAIR, both celebrated and warned against the drug. (And it was adapted into a movie with some big names.)
But there was also a bizarrely pro-Prozac book by maybe a psychiatrist guy who also fancied himself a social commentator. It said that in some cases it was a miracle, like a personality transplant in patients who had been crippled with social phobia / shyness and now were huge best-foot-forward american-dream success stories. His let-me-make-some-warnings chapter was — as I suppose I am distorting in memory — about the social/political need to maybe curb the availability of people to turn themselves into winners artificially and thereby distort society.
So with that atmosphere, it’s not surprising this arc from whenever you said it was, would (as Deety observes) focus on this chemical and not say “antidepressant” generally or maybe “one of those new line of antidepressants”.
(Does anybody remember the older term “mood elevators”?)
As we’ve discussed before, my understanding is that GoComics doesn’t curate or otherwise organize the strips that run. They take what the source sends each day and puts it in the framework. Assuming the original syndicate, King Features, is the supplier then they’d be the one. That could explain the difference between GC and CK, as the syndicate might prefer different runs as to not compete.
@ Brian (10) – Anything’s possible, this is simply the very first comic that I have discovered running on both of those websites at the same time. GoComics often leaves a expired strip in its archive indefinitely, but Comics Kingdom has tended to flush expired strips (or ones that have changed syndicates) very quickly, and in some cases unceremoniously rudely, just days after the expiration (“Retail” is a prime example).
“mood elevators” … Does anyone remember the term “Mother’s Little Helper”?
It appeared to me the comic was a satire of the medication culture of its time. I thought it should have gotten a little disclaimer recommending you not give your cat Prozac, but I guess I’m not really surprised to find this recent article suggesting you should…
https://www.comfortedkitty.com/should-you-give-your-cat-prozac/
A few Tribune strips run on both platforms, notably Gasoline Alley and Dick Tracy. Both sites carry the current strips. Tracy is linked from the A-Z page on Comics Kingdom, but GA isn’t. You can find it on some client sites, like Seattle Times. You can also create a link from the main CK site.
https://comicskingdom.com/gasoline-alley/2024-06-27
Mark in Boston – Yes.
May be a duplicate – posted, seemed to post, but disappeared.
Mark In Boston – Yes, I remember that term!
Re: “Mother’s Little Helper” – I thought I remembered hearing the phrase in a song by some obscure group, but it turned out to be a title from The Rolling Stones.
Miltown, or Meprobamate, came about in the mid 1950’s. It was one of the very first “tranquilizers”. It was often prescribed to anxious housewives and soon gained the nickname “Mother’s Little Helper” and inspired the Rolling Stones song. Librium came along around 1959 and Valium around 1963.
Valium reminds me of my friend, let’s call him Twitch, who began taking it in the 1970’s and found it helpful. He moved to Hungary for a couple of years to study the music of Bela Bartok. At that time Hungary was still a satellite of the USSR and as such refused to recognize Western patents, so just about any drug from the West was available in a Hungarian generic version.
He asked his Hungarian doctor if he could get a prescription to Valium. The doctor said “I can prescribe anything you want, but I don’t know what Valium is. Do you know the pharmacology name?”
Twitch was pretty sure he knew the name. “Chlorpromazine.” “Oh, you can get chlorpromazine here, no problem,” said the doctor, and gave Twitch the prescription.
It was a very strange evening for Twitch. He went with friends to the ballet, sat down and for two solid hours did not move or take his eyes off the stage.
He decided that Thorazine was not really for him, and resolved to be more careful about pharmacology in the future. And he memorized the word “Diazepam.”
Jackie is just speeding away
Thought she was James Dean for a day
Then I guess she had to crash
Valium would have helped that bash
Said, “Hey, babe,
Take a walk on the wild side.”
I said, “Hey, honey,
Take a walk on the wild side.”
I had a lot of trouble finding Tylenol here in Germany, even when I gave the pharmacist the generic name “acetaminophen”. I later discovered that in Europe, the alternative generic name “paracetamol” is used. Both names were derived as abbreviations of the same chemical formula: para-acetylaminophenol.
@Kilby 20: Do you mean to say that for once the Germans decided to go with the SHORTER word for something?
I was aware of “paracetamol” from seeing videos from UK providers.
@ MiB (21) – Don’t give the Germans credit for the shorter name. Once “Paracetamol” had been adopted into the “British Pharmacopoeia” (in 1963), the rest of Europe simply followed that lead.