For Better or For Worse

Here's some bit about Mark Trail, which was never on my list of comic strips I read as a young buck, me being a young buck of discernible taste, but this caught my eye:

Newspaper comics are a funny thing. Like television, the medium requires a constant output of new material. But due to any given comic strip’s short length, it’s hard to achieve the same depth of serialized storytelling as television, even if the periodical medium welcomes it. A variety of comics, from the satirical Doonesbury to the dramedy For Better or Worse, have successfully achieved not only serialization but also character development over the decades they’ve been in print; however, just as many have shown little to no growth.

It's downright painful to see Dagwood Bumstead talking about cell phones when he should be making gargantuan sandwiches and getting all up in Blondie's guts; I think it's perfectly fine for, of all things, comic strips to stay frozen in time - not only are they non-sequitous from strip to strip, but they're non-sequitous to real life in a unique way that most media can't get away with, maybe because people go to the comics more for their warmth and familiarity than to actually be entertained. I'm also pretty sure I spelled non-sequitous wrong, if it's even a word.

But mainly, I'm reminded of how Lynn Johnston of For Better of For Worse just said "fuck it" and instead of moving along with the times simply hit the RESET button and started running her strip from the beginning, 1979. I'm surprised that in our nostalgia-crazed society, this hasn't happened more often - after all, there's a Game Show Channel where people apparently watch replays of game shows from decades ago. I'm surprised there's not a channel where MTV is replayed day-by-day as it started in 1981, or NBC's Must-See Thursday Night Lineup from the '80s. Or soap operas:

The thing I don't understand about soap operas is that all of a sudden, after decades and decades of being on every day, they're dropping like flies because of "costs." Which, from what I can ascertain, includes a video camera from 1988 and the interior of a Foot Locker with wood paneling. Fuck it, why don't they just start the goddam thing over again, let 'em run from, say, June 30 1952 (first viewing of Guiding Light) and run again each day as if in real time? Hell, wouldn't people get a kick out of the fads and fashions anyways?

What's my point? I have no earthly idea. But that's what happens when you've coasted through life on your good looks, I guess.