Cul de Sac is a comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 created by Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson (cartoonist)

Richard C. Thompson is an illustrator and cartoonist best known for his syndicated comic strip Cul de Sac and the illustrated poem "Make the Pie Higher". He was given the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year in 2011....

 and distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

Universal Press Syndicate

Universal Press Syndicate, a subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, is the world's largest independent press syndicate. It distributes lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and other content. Popular columns include Dear Abby, Ann Coulter, Roger Ebert and News of the Weird...

 to 150 worldwide newspapers.

The central character is four-year-old Alice Otterloop, and the strip depicts her daily life at pre-school and at home. Thompson, also known for his weekly Richard's Poor Almanac

Richard's Poor Almanac

Richard's Poor Almanac is a cartoon series by Richard Thompson which appears weekly in The Washington Post Style section. It began in 1997.-Make the Pie Higher:...

 strip in the Washington Post, began Cul de Sac as a limited strip in the Washington Post in February 2004. In September 2007, Cul de Sac entered daily syndication with the Universal Press Syndicate. Digital distribution is by Uclick

Uclick

Uclick LLC was an American corporation selling "digital entertainment content" for the desktop, the web and mobile phones...

 GoComics

GoComics

GoComics is a website launched in 2005 by the digital entertainment provider Uclick. It was originally created as a distribution portal for comic strips on mobile phones, but in 2006, the site was redesigned and expanded to include online strips and cartoons...

.

Characters and story

Universal Press Syndicate describes Cul de Sac as "a light-hearted comic strip centered around a four-year-old girl and her suburban life experiences on a cul-de-sac with her friends Beni and Dill, older brother Petey and her classmates at Blisshaven Academy pre-school. Alice describes her father's car as a Honda-Tonka Cuisinart and talks to the class guinea pig, Mr. Danders. She has the typical older brother who plays jokes on her, and she contemplates ways to keep the scary clown from jumping out of the jack-in-the-box with friends."

Alice Otterloop

The strip's main character. A willful four-year old girl living in suburbia. The strip typically focuses on her exposure to new things and her commentary on these experiences. She enjoys dancing on manhole covers.

Petey Otterloop

Alice's older brother Petey is quiet, bookish, more experienced and is Alice's primary source of information on new phenomena. The eight-year-old has been called "King of the Picky Eaters" by his mother; however according to Internet rankings, he still is not the world's pickiest eater. Petey often describes mundane school and suburban experiences in a mythic style as though the information was being passed down from generation to generation of school children. A comic devotee, he is also an aspiring comic artist, who is forever working on and revising his own graphic novel, Toad Zombies. Petey only considers himself to have three and a half friends (Viola, Andre, Loris, and Ernesto, who only counts as half a friend since he might be imaginary.) Thompson has said that Petey, Andre and Loris together are like an atom, with Andre as the proton, Petey as the neutron, and Loris as the electron. It has been speculated that Petey has a high-functioning form of autism

Autism

Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...

, something that Thompson has neither confirmed or denied.

Madeline Otterloop

Alice and Petey's mother is a stay-at-home mom taking care of the day-to-day running of the household. She is often seen driving the children around in a van of a color "so neutral that it does not occur in nature". Mrs. Otterloop's maiden name is Urquhart

Clan Urquhart

Urquhart is a Highland Scottish clan. They traditionally occupied the lands in the district and town of Cromarty, a former Royal Burgh with an excellent natural harbour on the tip of The Black Isle. Chiefs of the Clan were Barons and hereditary Sheriffs of the county for hundreds of years...

.

Peter Otterloop

Alice and Petey's father is seen less frequently and works a daily office job at an unnamed location. Peter Sr. is bald, slight in build, and nerdy like his son. Before the strip was rebooted for syndication, his employer was described as the Federal "Department of Consumption". However, a number of Washington, D.C.-specific features have disappeared since the reboot, and his employer has not been mentioned since. According to the official website, he currently works as the "Assistant Director of Pamphlets at the U.S. Department of Consumption, Office of Consumer Complaints". He commutes to work in a car that Alice describes as a "Honda

Honda

is a Japanese public multinational corporation primarily known as a manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles.Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, as well as the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than...

-Tonka

Tonka

Tonka is an American toy company most known for its signature toy trucks and construction equipment.-History:On September 18, 1946 Mound Metalcraft was created in Mound, Minnesota with three men as partners, Lynn Everett Baker , Avery F. Crounse, and Alvin F. Tesch. The first products produced by...

 Cuisinart

Cuisinart

Cuisinart is a brand for small kitchen appliances, especially the food processor of the same name, one of the first to become popular in the United States. It was founded by Carl Sontheimer in 1971, and became a leading brand in the United States and Canada....

".

Dill Wedekind

Dill is possibly the most eccentric character in the strip, frequently making strange or unrelated statements. He is in the same class and neighborhood as Alice, as well as one of her best friends. A running joke is his reference to his disreputable older brothers.

Beni

Along with Dill, Beni is Alice's other best friend. He appears to be technically minded and is skilled with tools; his grandmother "tells filthy jokes in Spanish" and he himself once used the interjection "Hijole!" implying he might be Hispanic

Hispanic

Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...

. He is good at Soccer.

Ernesto

Ernesto is a crossing guard that Petey met and initially thought existed only in his imagination. He wears glasses and is always well-groomed in a tie and vest. When he was fired from his crossing guard position, he blamed Petey. He declared his affection for Viola and claimed a super-power (putting people's feet to sleep). Petey just wishes he would go away. Andre has told Petey definitively that Ernesto is imaginary, though he has yet to prove it; Mrs. Otterloop and Viola have both interacted with Ernesto, implying that he in fact exists.

Viola D'More

Viola, a girl in Petey's school band, plays the marimba

Marimba

The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...

. She wears glasses and has curly hair. She calls Petey "Petey Potterpoop" (a nickname which had, in fact, been given to Mr. Otterloop when he was Petey's age) and seems to enjoy embarrassing him, although she is always friendly and has never been deliberately cruel. Their relationship remains ambiguous, Petey sometimes seems to like her and at other times is almost indifferent. Alice calls her Petey's "almost girlfriend". Viola has an over-sized backpack with many adornments, one of which (a purple unicorn) she gave Petey as a charm against Ernesto. It apparently worked since Petey did not see Ernesto for several days after. For a long time, her last name was uncertain; Ernesto called her 'Viola D'More' when he was claiming her as 'his love' (see Viola d'amore

Viola d'amore

The viola d'amore is a 7- or 6-stringed musical instrument with sympathetic strings used chiefly in the baroque period. It is played under the chin in the same manner as the violin.- Structure and sound :...

). The D'More surname was confirmed in a June 2010 strip.

Marcus

A classmate of Alice. Bespectacled and nervy, Marcus is scared of his mother, who is always documenting him for scrapbooks.

Ms. Bliss

The only teacher at Blisshaven Academy, a pre-school attended by Alice, Beni, Dill and Marcus. She loves education and is usually cheerful. She often becomes irritated with the children's constant antics. She has been engaged multiple times to Timmy Fretwork, the Banjo Man, although they have yet to wed. Thompson has admitted on several occasions that Bliss is her first name, not her surname.

Mr. Danders

Blisshaven's pet guinea pig

Guinea pig

The guinea pig , also called the cavy, is a species of rodent belonging to the family Caviidae and the genus Cavia. Despite their common name, these animals are not in the pig family, nor are they from Guinea...

. Mr. Danders claims to be well read and has many literary opinions. He often speaks using eloquent, long words. A prominent character in the strip's early days, he last appeared in July 2010.

Andre Chang

A heavyset boy Petey met at cartoon camp. He has bushy hair with thick bangs, coke-bottle glasses, and wears shirts with sound effects printed on the front. He likes reading comics with lots of action and noise. He gets along very well with Alice.

Loris Slothrop

A short girl who goes to cartoon camp with Petey. She has big eyes, although her right eye is usually covered by her hair. She has from two to three ponytails sticking from her hair. When asked what type of comics she prefers, she said she likes "little cute animal cartoons with big eyes who're also magic robot vampire ninjas, but sensitive," an example being "Squirrelly Shirley, the pink robot alien girl crime-fighter who’s a werewolf squirrel." Loris's self-made comic book, "Lulu Lightspeed," "deals realistically with issues facing blue, big-eyed robots with pointed ears." She has been shown to be very fast, being the first one to run out the door when a bee invaded the cartoon camp. The surname "Slothrop" is shared with Tyrone Slothrop, the protagonist of Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern novel written by Thomas Pynchon and first published on February 28, 1973.The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest...

 by Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

.

Nara

An African-American preschooler about whom few details have surfaced. She frequently brings duck-shaped potatoes for show and tell, much to Alice's chagrin.

Sofie

A girl who came to Blisshaven more recently. At first she seemed very timid, sitting silently in the corner. After Alice dubbed her "Weird New Kid", Sofie revealed her aggressive nature. Alice is also seemingly incapable of remembering Sofie's name, frequently calling her "Soapie" and/or "Sofa."

Kevin

A preschooler with blond hair, prominent ears, and a "bucket head", according to Alice. He seems to have many anxieties and is a natural target for Alice's teasing.

Recurring themes

Mr. Otterloop's car

The car is tiny, and a recurring visual and verbal gag is how impossibly small the car is. Alice says it is "half cuisinart

Cuisinart

Cuisinart is a brand for small kitchen appliances, especially the food processor of the same name, one of the first to become popular in the United States. It was founded by Carl Sontheimer in 1971, and became a leading brand in the United States and Canada....

".

Manhole cover

Alice and her friends use a manhole cover in a nearby vacant lot as a soapbox

Soapbox

A soapbox is a raised platform on which one stands to make an impromptu speech, often about a political subject. The term originates from the days when speakers would elevate themselves by standing on a wooden crate originally used for shipment of soap or other dry goods from a manufacturer to a...

 for performance art or to declare opinions.

Shoebox dioramas

Petey is slowly documenting the history of man through the medium of shoebox dioramas which he keeps beneath his bed.

Big Shirley

Big Shirley is a large, friendly dog that belongs to Alice's grandmother. Alice is completely terrified of Big Shirley, once even abandoning her precious toy bunny Polyfil to save herself from the dog's slobbering clutches.

Little Neuro

A strip-within-the-strip, a parody of Little Nemo

Little Nemo

Little Nemo is the main fictional character in a series of weekly comic strips by Winsor McCay that appeared in the New York Herald and William Randolph Hearst's New York American newspapers from October 15, 1905 – April 23, 1911 and April 30, 1911 – July 26, 1914; respectively.The...

. Petey's favorite reading, a strip about a little boy who hardly ever stirs from his bed.

Sports

On several occasions, Petey has reluctantly played soccer on his mother's insistence. His lack of athletic skill and social awkwardness has resulted in multiple out-of-body experiences.

Books

The first book collection of Cul de Sac strips was published September 1, 2008 by Andrews McMeel Publishing. It includes the pre-syndication Washington Post strips in color, as well as a foreword by Bill Watterson

Bill Watterson

William Boyd Watterson II , known as Bill Watterson, is an American cartoonist and the author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes...

 (Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes is a syndicated daily comic strip that was written and illustrated by American cartoonist Bill Watterson, and syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his...

), who praised Thompson's work:

I thought the best newspaper comic strips were long gone, and I've never been happier to be wrong. Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac has it all—intelligence, gentle humor, a delightful way with words, and, most surprising of all, wonderful, wonderful drawings. Cul de Sacs whimsical take on the world and playful sense of language somehow gets funnier the more times you read it. Four-year-old Alice and her Blisshaven Preschool classmates will ring true to any parent. Doing projects in a cloud of glue and glitter, the little kids manage to reinterpret an otherwise incomprehensible world via their meandering, nonstop chatter. But I think my favorite character is Alice's older brother, Petey. A haunted, controlling milquetoast, he's surely one of the most neurotic kids to appear in comics. These children and their struggles are presented affectionately, and one of the things I like best about Cul de Sac is its natural warmth. Cul de Sac avoids both mawkishness and cynicism and instead finds genuine charm in its loopy appreciation of small events. Very few strips can hit this subtle note.

A second collection, Children at Play: A Cul de Sac Collection, was published in 2009 by Andrews McMeel. It features a foreword by writer-artist Mo Willems

Mo Willems

Mo Willems is an American writer, animator, and children's books author/illustrator.-Early life:Willems was raised in New Orleans, where he graduated from Trinity Episcopal School and the Isidore Newman School. He graduated cum laude from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He married...

. A treasury book, Cul de Sac Golden Treasury: A Keepsake Garland of Classics, was published July 6, 2010 by Andrews McMeel. It features strips from the previous two book collections along with the early strips from the original run in the Washington Post. The book also features captions with additional insight or commentary written by Thompson himself. Writer Charles Solomon praised the new book in his review for the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

, stating "Cul de Sac proves the comic strip remains a viable art form while bucking current trends".

A third book of strip reprints, titled Shapes & Colors: A Cul de Sac Collection, was released on December 14, 2010.

Cul de Sac animated

A series of Cul de Sac animated shorts, produced by RingTales

RingTales

RingTales is an animation production company that creates short online cartoons from existing print comics. Their flagship series, The New Yorker Animated Cartoons, was nominated for a 2008 Webby Awards for Online Animation.-List of series:...

, are hosted by Babelgum

Babelgum

Babelgum is a free to view Internet television platform supported by advertising. The project was set up in 2005 by Italian media and telecommunications entrepreneur Silvio Scaglia and scientist Erik Lumer, with the aim of developing interactive software for distributing TV shows and other forms...

. These shorts are 30-second to minute-long animated versions of the comic strips. Thompson's wife provides the voice of Madeline Otterloop, Alice and Petey's mother. Thompson has said that one of the kids is voiced by an adult.

External links

• Cul de Sac official site
• Cul de Sac daily
• Cul de Sac animated shorts