Today Pajama Diaries, a comic strip by Terri Libenson, announced it will run its final strip in January, after 14 years in the newspaper.
Here are 5 reasons I’m sad about that.
Pajama Diaries talks about sex in a modern way. Wanting it, not wanting it and all the negotiating that comes with that. It’s the kind of thing that happens with couples all the time in real life… but not on the comics page.
Pajama Diaries has Jewish characters. For a little while there were three strips in the paper that referenced Jewish holidays, then two, and now there’s only Rhymes WIth Orange. Oh vey.
Pajama Diaries is written by a woman, and has diverse cast of funny female characters. If you look at the ratio of male cartoonists to female cartoonist on most every comics page in America, at best it’s something like 20:4. I believe that if you want to know what it feels like to walk in another man’s shoes, you need more than men’s shoes. I wrote an essay about in a previous blog post here.
Pajama Diaries’ characters age. That’s not the norm on the comics page. Not every artist makes that choice, and I’m fine with that, but it makes for dynamic content.
I’ve gotten to know Terri the person through The National Cartoonist Society. Without getting anyone in trouble, there have been escapades. Now that she’s writing graphic novels for kids, will her newspaper cartooning pals get to see her as much, or will she hang out with the kid’s lit bookworms? Fingers crossed that while I won’t get to see her characters on the comics page, I will get to see the character herself. I wish her the very best!