Weltschmerz, Gareth Lind’s long-running weekly political comic strip, has come to an end. The final strip appeared Thursday, June 26.
Citing a need to move on after almost 15 years of producing a weekly strip, cartoonist Lind ended the adventures of uber-liberal ranter Horst Weltschmerz on an open note, wrapping up a long-running sub-plot involving comatose terrorism suspect Raj but leaving the relationship crisis of the title character in permanent limbo.
As he writes in the blog post accompanying the final strip, Lind is still planning future projects, perhaps with the same characters, but his loyalties remain with the serialized comic strip form, as opposed to the graphic novel or webcomics:
“… it was hard for me to imagine the characters not living on. 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 […] But my cartooning ain’t over. I’ve got plans. Whether I can find an economic model for them remains to be seen …”
The full text of the blog post is worth reading for anyone interested in webcomics economics and the shift away from print.
Running since 1994 in a small number of Canadian alternative weeklies that at one time included Toronto’s Eye Weekly as well as Pulse (Edmonton), Echo Weekly (Kitchener-Guelph area), View (Hamilton) and Pulse (St. Catharines/Niagara), the strip revolved around the neurotic political worldview of Horst Weltschmerz (a Woody Allen-Noam Chomsky type and Lind’s chief mouthpiece) and his coterie of trend-embracing, buzzword-spouting friends, rivals, and mortal enemies. The strip was decidedly left-of-centre and often concerned with issues surrounding technology and the environment, with particular venom and satire reserved for Conservative Party politicians like PM Stephen Harper and the widely-hated former Ontario premier Mike Harris. In many ways, and to use another German loan-word, with its deer-in-the headlights fascination with neo-cons, the web, sex, and global warming, the strip perfectly captured the zeitgeist of millennial and post-Sept. 11 Canada. By way of example, the most recent storyline featured Horst cyber-stalking his ex-girlfriend, who left him for a lesbian lover who is secretly streaming their sex-life to pay-per-view fans online, while Horst’s friend Cosmo has embraced veganism and the SUV-diet, a parody of the 100-mile diet that involves eating only the equivalent of the bio-fuel consumed by a typical SUV in one year, all while their friend Raj hovers on death’s door after being abducted by CSIS.
A restless, intelligent strip, Weltschmerz featured inventive design, tight linework, and an economy of presentation that was distinct, instantly accessible, and funny, despite its often dense wordplay and subject matter. A collection of strips featuring a linked continuity, Attack of the Same-Sex Sleeper Cells, was self-published by Lind and released in 2006.
An interview with the Guelph-based Lind, who also runs a graphic design business, accompanied the final strip in select papers.