Eric Dietz and his strip were elevated to the realm of the immortals last Friday, when his hero pulled off one the most inspirational gags I have ever come across in the annals of cartoon history.

Machine gunning the Fuzzykins, cutting their wimpy-cute personas apart with savage bursts from an automatic rifle as blood and gore flew all over the place, it was as magnificent and moving a spectacle as I have ever been treated to.

A tear came to my eye as I saw Baby’s familiar visage at the door and at the point where all hell was breaking loose in the Fuzzykin’s living room, the phrase, “Thank God It’s Friday” came to mind with a vengeance.

Thanks, Eric. I thought you’d gone soft on us—particularly after you pulled that lame stunt about McBob being too negative and cynical and all the rest of that hogwash, and that it was to be replaced. And when I happened to ask someone about it, to be told that you were still writing the thing under a pseudonym, I had an inkling about what the outcome would be.

However, I’ve been disappointed by others too many times in the past to allow myself the kind of 100 percent assurance that you, too, had not deserted us, had not been born again in Scott Stocking’s mold, had not become so enamored by the senile wisdom that artists should give the public what they want—and they don’t need cynicism or any other kind of characterization that tells it like it is.

If anything was calculated to renew my faith in the essential well-being of human nature’s capacity to kick an overweening courtesy in the nuts without regard for the consequences, this was it. The first I’ve encountered in a long, long time …

Once again, thanks. For staying true to yourself, if nothing else—and keep up the elegant work. “When the going gets Weird …”

Greg Brown

NIU Alumnus