Cul de Sac
By Richard Thompson | 12.7K FollowersAbout Cul de Sac
Richard Thompson's "Cul de Sac" is a comic strip about the life of a preschool girl named Alice Otterloop. It is a lighthearted comic strip centered around a 4-year old girl and her suburban life experiences on a cul-de-sac with her friends Beni and Dill, her older brother Petey, and her classmates at Blisshaven Academy preschool. Alice describes her father's car as a "Honda-Tonka Cuisinart" and talks to the class guinea pig, Mr. Danders. She has the typical older brother who plays jokes on her, and with her friends she contemplates ways to keep the scary clown from jumping out of the jack-in-the-box.
Meet Richard Thompson
At the National Cartoonists Society’s 65th Annual Reuben Awards dinner in 2011, Richard Thompson found himself atop one of the great pinnacles in a professional cartoonist’s career. Thompson, creator of the syndicated comic strip "Cul de Sac"—which first appeared in The Washington Post Magazine in 2005—was honored by his peers with the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.
In addition to this great honor, Thompson was also the recipient of the National Cartoonists Society’s Magazine and Book Illustration Award and its Newspaper Illustration Award. He won a gold and a silver Funny Bone Award from the Society of Illustrators for humorous illustration. And in 2004, he received the Milton F. “Sonny” Clogg Alumni of the Year award from Montgomery College in Rockfield, Maryland.
Thompson passed away in July 2016 from complications of Parkinson's disease.
Cast of Characters
Petey Otterloop
Petey is 8 years old. Somewhat timid and reserved, he's an immovable object, though there are passions raging beneath his diffident surface. Named King of the Picky Eaters by his mother, Petey tested as "gifted but not really talented." He also plays the oboe with more enthusiasm than skill and possesses a somewhat gloomy imagination.
Peter "Dad" Otterloop
Gets into his tiny car almost every day and drives to work. He's assistant director of pamphlets at the U.S. Department of Consumption, Office of Consumer Complaints, whatever that is. Mostly he's baffled by things, Alice and Petey not being the least of them.
Madeline "Mom" Otterloop
Drives a van of a color so neutral, it doesn’t occur in nature. She’s capable of doing a million things simultaneously, about five of them well. She’s blessed with a volatile sense of humor and a laugh so loud and contagious that it makes Petey withdraw his head fully into his shirt collar in a blaze of embarrassment.