After 86 years of amazing adventure and right-wing preaching, the comic strip “Annie” (originally called “Little Orphan Annie”) ends today. Surprisingly, it’s not ending happily:
“Annie got kidnapped more than any child on the planet,” Maeder says.
And that, dear readers, is her predicament now.
She’s been spirited away to Guatemala by her war-criminal captor. Warbucks is huddling with the FBI and Interpol but there aren’t many clues.
Annie’s captor says they’re stuck with each other. Welcome to your new life, he says.
And there it ends.
You can read the final strip here.
At first, I felt irritated that Tribune Media (the owners of Annie) didn’t continue Annie long enough to let it end happily. But on rethinking, I kind of like it. We can take it on faith that Daddy Warbucks will eventually shake off his funk and rescue Annie, and that Annie and Warbucks together will defeat the kidnapper and go home for a while until the next dictator or mobster or union boss kidnaps Annie. It’s appropriate that the comic strip doesn’t really have an ending, because Annie’s adventures seemed endless.
Of course, I would have preferred that the comic strip end back in 1968, when creator Harold Gray died. Although Gray’s successors on the strip include some excellent cartoonists (Leonard Starr, for goodness sake!), none of them were able to bring Gray’s slightly frightening intensity and vitality to the strip.
(Click on the panel to read the entire strip.)
I like Gray’s artwork a lot. The tiny heads and enormous hands feel expressionistic. And I love how Gray’s artwork almost always seems claustrophobic; ceilings feel uncomfortably close to characters’ heads, even when Gray draws outdoor scenes. Gray’s drawing tells a story very efficiently, but where it really shines is in getting across Gray’s fictional world, a world which despite Annie’s relentless optimism, was frightening and difficult, and in which the new death threat or kidnapping was always just around the corner.
Gray’s claustrophobic artwork was also a good match for his political views, which were spectacularly narrow. Gray’s reaction to the great depression was to preach that anyone could make it if only they embraced hard work and optimism (and socked out the occasional thug); anyone talking about larger economic issues behind structural unemployment would have been dismissed by Gray as a whiner. (I really regret that Gray never showed Daddy Warbucks punching out Keynes.) Gray had an awesome ability to deny reality; but even though a world in which anyone can make it with a little pluck and some help from a redheaded orphan isn’t realistic, it is a fun fantasy to read in a comic strip.
I haven’t yet seen much blogging about the end of Annie (except for this post on Comicscomics). But here’s some interesting past blogging about Little Orphan Annie: Illustration Art has “Harold Gray: An Appreciation,” featuring several very large (if you click on them) reproductions of Gray’s artwork and the blog’s patented “you kids get off my lawn” attitude towards modern comics. Jeet Heer quotes some Art Spiegelman comments about Gray’s work, plus in the comments a reader is quite funny on the subject of what a lousy parent Daddy Warbucks was. And Madinkbeard, reviewing an old reprint collection, makes a number of very interesting comments about Little Orphan Annie.
What’s the deal with Warbucks’ hand in the last panel? Does he have freakish double fingernails, a set on each side? Does the back of his hand look like a palm due to some awful genetic mutation? WTF?
You mean Warbuck’s hand in the final strip? He has his hand pressed against an enormous glass window. I don’t think the artist did a good job communicating that, though.
Ohhhhh. No, he didn’t. But now that you mention it I see that’s the intention.
How funny! I assumed that some time during the 55 years in which I wasn’t reading the strip, Daddy Warbucks had gone cyberpunk, and that those were the fingertip bio-pouches where the War-BORG stored its retractable surgical steel cyber-claws.
But yeah, now that you say it, I guess I can see it the way you describe. Huh. It’s like that bunny/duck optical illusion. I guess either way is valid.
—Myca
Spoken like a true whiner. A review of the Little Orphan Annie comic strip becomes an occasion to pontificate about structural unemployment reflected in data showing the number of people seeking jobs to outnumber the number of jobs? Honestly, this blog parodies itself. What’s wrong with a little hard work and optimism?
Oh, poor us, the data shows that the number of people wanting jobs is growing while the number of people wanting to hire is shrinking. What a shame we haven’t all been able to land jobs in coal mines, on oil platforms, or in Afghanistan reconstruction. Boo hoo.
I wouldn’t wish those jobs on my worst enemy. For the record? I’ve had two real jobs. The first was a mess in that way that can happen when you’re just out of school and too dumb to read the big flashing neon signs that say “Leave this job alone.” But my current job? Loving it. It wasn’t hard to find (I wasn’t even done with my old job when I found it as a matter of fact). This job and I were a good fit. And I’m not unique in this respect either. There are plenty of happy working people (employed or not) out here leading their lives.
Gray may have had a cramped drawing style, but he had a liberated mind. What’s the point of harping on employment stats as if all employees should be treated as victims? The vast majority of us are not, and it’s high time someone stood up and said so.
Nobody.really, I’m not interested in dealing with you while Amp is traveling. You can come back in 24 hours.
Also, if you hate the blog, feel free not to come back at all.
That wasn’t satire?
I read it over a couple times and decided it wasn’t, but if it was, then mea culpa, and I rescind my comments.
Sure, paragraph 3 doesn’t work well as satire. I still hold out hope that paragraph 3 was just poorly done satire.
I’m thinking it was satire, but only N.R. can say for sure.
Why would you say that?
“People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.” Ogden Nash
Because the idea that Ampersand’s post is implying that people can’t be happy in their jobs is so mind-bogglingly stupid.