Aack! 'Cathy' is a terrible representation of women!

When I was a little kid, I loved reading the Sunday comics. I looked forward to each new installment of "Calvin and Hobbes" and laughed at "The Far Side" even when I didn't really understand why it was supposed to be funny.

I wondered if any marriages really resembled the witty, hate-filled spite-fest depicted in "The Lockhorns" or the hilarious, alcohol-fueled domestic abuse at the center of "Andy Capp." I learned about senility from "Pickles" and how deadening office life can be from "Dilbert."

But what the Sunday comics really taught me was how to hate.

I couldn't help but get irritated by the long-winded melodrama of "Mary Worth," and my eyes burned with a fiery rage every time they landed on "The Family Circus." It seemed that if "Marmaduke" were a real dog, he would have been euthanized years ago. "Beetle Bailey" would have received the "Full Metal Jacket" soap-in-the-towel beating on the first day of boot camp.

Of all the terrible comic strips I had to endure every weekend, however, "Cathy" proved to be one of the most insufferable.

I had all but forgotten about the portly chocoholic until I read that Cathy Guisewite, the strip's creator, had announced she was going to publish her last frame on Oct. 3.

In the retrospectives and postmortems that have been written since the news broke, many sources say that "Cathy" was a revolutionary comic strip. When it first began, the titular character was a relatable everywoman representing those caught between the traditionalist and feminist sides of 1970s culture.

They say she spoke to women on an intimate level and articulated their fears, dreams and desires in a way few others could. She helped erase the stigma attached to women who "wanted it all" but were unsure how to get it.

As true as all that may be, there's one aspect of the strip these sources tend to gloss over: Cathy was one of the most annoying, least funny characters in all of modern fiction.

If Cathy helped women feel more comfortable in their own skin, she did so in the most ham-handed way possible. Instead of creating a dialog by pointing out gender-based double standards of attractiveness in a humorous way, she just yelled, "Aack! I'm too fat to fit into my cupcake eating sweatpants!"

Her way of making a point was like going to get a tooth pulled only to have the dentist repeatedly punch you in mouth until your molar fell out. Sure, the job got done, but it was an excruciatingly painful experience.

Guisewite also recycled the same "jokes" for 34 long years. Many women have issues with body image, food, relationships and work, but few - if any - hammer on these subjects as relentlessly and humorlessly as "Cathy" did.

How many frames of Cathy sitting at her cluttered desk thinking something to the effect of, "Aack! I wish someone would put a husband in my in-box instead of all these expense reports!" did we need before we could consider that subject covered?

Still, the biggest objection I have to "Cathy" isn't that was hideously illustrated - which it was - or that it bludgeoned to death any point it ever tried to make - which it did.

The real problem I have with "Cathy" is that it used a distorted picture of women without offering anything of value or substance in return. When "30 Rock's" exaggerated protagonist Liz Lemon deals with the same issues Cathy did, she does so in a thought-provoking, funny way.

Cathy, on the other hand, just yelled "Aack! My mother drives me crazy! Where's my Häagen-Dazs?!"

In trying to create a complicated character torn between what some women unfortunately see as mutually exclusive goals - a career or a family, eating well or looking good - she created a gross caricature of modern women.

And that would be fine except the caricature hurt more than it helped, if not women specifically, then certainly comics in general.

Contact John Houder at jhouder@gmail.com.