Neither shall we chuckle at the antics of a boisterous 6-year-old named Calvin and his stuffed tiger, or wonder about the wry world of talking cows, half-wit humans, devious insects, and other bizarre characters that inhabited "The Far Side".
Now just short of a fifty year run, Charlie Brown and the rest of the "Peanuts" gang are set to fade away like it's predecessors into the annals of comic strip legend.
Charles Schulz, creator of the world's most endearing cartoon, is retiring to concentrate on fighting his newly-diagnosed colon cancer. He will be undergoing outpatient chemotherapy near his home and studio in Santa Rosa,Calif.
Published in more than 2,600 newspapers reaching 355 million readers in 75 countries and 21 languages, the final daily strip will appear on Monday, Jan. 3 and the last original Sunday strip on Feb. 6. After that, United Features Syndicate, which distributes "Peanuts", will begin re-running strips drawn in 1974.
Many cartoonists, like Mort Walker of "Beetle Baily" employee assistants who help write gags and ideas and ink in pencil drawings - Schulz has always maintained a firm hold on his creation and has refused to groom another artist to carry on. He has said that when he goes, Peanuts will go with him.
So falls the curtain on another popular strip, just the latest in a long line of surprise retirements of toons seemingly still fresh and in their prime.
Industry insiders generally agree that it all started with "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau, who, in 1983 announced that he would be taking a 20-month sabbatical. Up until then, the notion of a cartoonist taking such an extended break was unthinkable, and when they did opt for a vacation they simply worked many weeks ahead of deadline to produce enough strips to cover for their absence.
The landscape seems to have changed for the new generation. The grind of cranking out panels in a seven-day-a-week schedule can be relentless, and for Burke Breathed (Bloom County and Outland) Gary Larson (The Far Side) and Bill Watterson (Calvin And Hobbes) the idea of churning out a daily strip began to loose it's appeal as each felt the pull to move beyond the constraints of comics towards other outlets.
Comic strips are serious business. Each year syndicates receive more than 4,000 proposals for new strips and out of those only about 15 will ever make it into print, and only three or four will ever survive beyond their fifth year.
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