Cartoonist to stop drawing 'Cul de Sac'

Updated: August 19, 2012 - 5:54 PM

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Three years after revealing that he has Parkinson's disease, comic-strip creator Richard Thompson, 54, says he will end his popular strip "Cul de Sac" in late September. "Parkinson's disease is horribly selfish and demanding," Thompson said. "A daily comic strip is, too, and I can only deal with one at a time."

"Cul de Sac" debuted as a weekly feature in 2004, in the Washington Post Magazine.

Since then, "Cul de Sac" -- about preschooler Alice Otterloop -- has won a loyal following. Syndicate Universal Uclick rolled it out as a daily strip in 2007, and it is now syndicated to more than 250 newspapers, including the Star Tribune, which started running it in 2008.

"I've known for a year or more that I was working on borrowed time," said Thompson, who works out of his Arlington, Va., studio. "My lettering had begun to wander off in 2009, but that could be fixed easily enough. But when Alice's and Dill's heads began to look under-inflated last winter, I figured I was losing control of the drawing, too. When I needed help with the inking (the hardest but most satisfying part of drawing the strip), well, that was probably a tipping point."

Despite the setback, Thompson said he's not about to quit. "But I'm sure my work will change. It may look like it was done by Cy Twombly using his sleeve."

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