Tony Cochran’s Agnes is a whimsical look at childhood through the eyes of the title character and her best friend, Trout. What sets this strip apart is the focus on that limbo just before little girls discover boys and appropriate social skills.
© Tony Cochran - All Rights Reserved.
Agent Gates by Carmen Subhiyah & Kyle Hilton
Alley Oop by Jack and Carole Bender
Comments (15) (Please sign in to comment)
rshive said, about 1 year ago
Granny may be cheap, mostly of necessity. But she certainly has a grasp of human nature.
SusanSunshine
said, about 1 year ago
Writing in pencil on a tablet of lined paper has a sort of built-in anti-viral property, Agnes.
J. Short
said, about 1 year ago
I think some politicians already have that one up and running.
Dani Rice
said, about 1 year ago
@J. Short
Amen, brother, Amen!
smalltownbrown said, about 1 year ago
Some?
SUSAN NEWMAN
said, about 1 year ago
Every time we see Granny Anteater, she’s got her pickle puss in the newspaper.
I wonder what she reads: society news?
Mona Warner said, about 1 year ago
I for one have great admiration for Granny
Night-Gaunt49 said, about 1 year ago
Granny has to manage Agnes an she still keeps her cool.
rshive said, about 1 year ago
@Mona Warner
I tend to also. She reminds me of a great aunt I had. Objectively, she did not have a happy life—death of two small children, death of her husband at a fairly young age, and poverty through it all. But she kept chugging, with no bitterness that my young eyes could see.
We don’t know the back story of how Agnes came to be with Granny; but it could hardly have been a happy one. While I can laugh at Agnes’ spectacular faux pas, I also root for her ultimate success, feeling pretty confident that sometime in the future she’ll achieve it. By that time Granny will be dead and gone; and hopefully Agnes will remember how much she owes to her.
SUSAN NEWMAN
said, about 1 year ago
@rshive
If Agnes succeeds in life (as I hope she will), it will be IN SPITE OF, and not BECAUSE OF her grandmother.
In all the time I’ve been reading this strip, I have never seen one gesture of affection or word of encouragement from that woman.
I’m of the belief that the only reason she took Agnes in was for the money the state pays for her upkeep.
That’s the tragedy of so many foster homes.
rshive said, about 1 year ago
@SUSAN NEWMAN
I guess I understand where you’re coming from comic strip wise. Let’s just say we see the world through different eyes.
When I was growing up, we lived for stretches of time with some of my Mom’s family, who were actually in poverty. Some of them later upgraded to public low income housing. I didn’t realize that it was poverty when I was living there; but when I went back after I got older, I was almost appalled. When you hear people say “We didn’t know we were poor”, believe it. It’s an attitude almost as much as it is an income thing.
Without going into long wording, suffice it to say that this sort of colors my perception of Granny. As I said, we see the world through different eyes.
BTW, my neighbor across the street is a foster mother for our state’s Division of Family Services. She handles only adolescent girls ; and has done this for over 20 years. You certainly don’t get wealthy doing it. I have boundless admiration for her. Good intentions often have ways of going awry. And government programs are no exception. Life could be much rougher for some of those girls without what people like her do.
SusanSunshine
said, about 1 year ago
Susan N — Grandma and Agnes adore each other.
NO one has to take in a grandchild by law.
The idea of doing it for compensation is very funny, if you know how little is paid.
It varies from state to state and by the age of the child, but for middle class families it’s almost always less than half the cost of actually raising the child, which is why there’s such a desperate lack of foster parents.
Someone as poor as Agnes’ grandmother doesn’t have the money to double what she’s given, IF she’s even applied to be paid,
but she MUST be sharing what little she has, just to keep them both alive, albeit in poverty.
She wouldn’t get enough to cover Agnes’ expenses, much less anything left over for herself.
In California, a fairly rich state, for a kid of about Agnes’ age, it’s about $500 a month, and that won’t even pay the difference for Granma to be renting or buying a 2 bedroom place instead of one, much less buy her food and clothing.
That’s why no tutoring or piano lessons or other extras that add up to hundreds a month.
The only people who get “extra” money from foster care take in multiple children, put sevral in a room, and skimp on their care, which is illegal, though sadly, it happens.
Granny’s got a sarcastic sense of humor, and a practical streak….
and a determination to help Agnes cope with reality, all of which you insist on seeing as cruelty… but Agnes doesn’t.
The archives here have no search function or multiple strip view option, so it’s difficult to find examples….
but in the mid-January snowstorm “alert” strips, or the Christmastime car breakdown in the snow, or the many times Grandma has been willing to sit through Agnes’ plays, stories, and homemade board games, you can easily see their devotion and protectiveness towards each other.
Try watching some old episodes online of “Roseanne” to see even “crueler,” but loving, parents.
Like this strip, it’s funny!
mynx wormwood said, about 1 year ago
Projection is the art of seeing in other people what we hate in ourselves.
Hunter7 said, about 1 year ago
Foster parents get monthly stipend or more. Grandparents get the children. None of my relatives got paid by the government for taking in their sister’s kids. My aunt raised different grandkids and great grandkids. Never got a dime for fostering. That’s because she wasn’t fostering. She took custody.
.
If grandma were getting monthly money from the government, don’t you think she would be living in a better place than an one bedroom tiny trailer. Where we can see the rivets in the walls? Or Grandma or Agnes would be wearing better clothes? Or there would be something more than poptarts as a treat?
.
They don’t have TV. They don’t have a computer. So how are Grandma and Agnes to get the daily news? Guess they will just have to use the radio.
DC Taylor said, about 1 year ago
I think Agnes read Obama’s mind.