Cartoonist ends alternative weeklies' Weltschmerz strip

Horst Weltschmerz has been silenced. Cartoonist Gareth Lind, whose strip has appeared for 15 years in publications across Canada, particularly Eye Weekly (for 11 of those 15 years), View, Pulse Niagara, Echo Weekly and Metropolis, has discontinued Weltschmerz (German for "world pain"). As the result, he is giving up a soapbox for ranting about, amusing and perhaps educating his readers about technology and the environment (and sexual politics). But he felt it was time.

In drawing the farewell ice-floe image above (which appears this week's View and Echo, along with an interview and a few vintage strips), it was hard for me to imagine the characters not living on [Lind said, in a post on his own blog]. They may well, somehow, in some incarnation. But right now it feels like they've lived long enough with me. It's time for Horst -- and me -- to move on. And in the final frames above, he is in fact moving. Somewhere.

It's easy to admire the self-awareness of cartoonists who simply turn off the tap; they decide they've said all they can say, at least in that particular format or storyline, announce it's over and move on. As much as the regular readers lament it, they probably also recognize what a challenge it must be to make a living churning out amusing, insightful storylines week after week (or, horrors, day after day).

"My life has really been sort of tied to cartooning right now and I'll probably fall flat and get depressed for a bit after the initial 'Wee! I have all this time.'," Lind told columinist Emma Renda in Echo Weekly.

On his own blog, Lind explained he was going to take the summer off and then see where sitting at his drafting table leads, post-Horst and Celia. He says that the web is not a panacea and he's not sure he has a graphic novel in him. Earning a living is a major concern, particularly as the market for strips in newspapers has been shrinking.

I want to continue to explore environmental and technological themes -- more pertinent today than ever. To be able to do so in a way that both makes people laugh and makes me more than small change is the challenge.