End of the Year at End of the Earth
Editor’s note: To further the idea that this was a weird year in a weird city, here’s a calendric compendium of Chad Huculak’s most popular End of the Earth cartoons from 2015 – at last something Edmonton can be proud of!
January
Edmonton is a winter city, so I have a lot of time to think about snow as I’m shoveling it six months a year. My neighbour is retired and likely sits inside his house with his face pressed against the window, shovel in hand, waiting – no, praying – for a snowflake so that he can get outside and shovel for something to do. While his sidewalks are bare year-long, mine suffer in comparison. It’s a good day if I can shovel within 24 hours of a snowfall. With that in mind, if you have absolutely nothing better to do all day, you’d think you could shovel a bit of your over-worked neighbour’s walk? It’s more than being polite, it’s being CANADIAN. The odd time I make it out to tackle the snow before my neighbour does, I’ll shovel six or so feet of his sidewalk. No big deal. Do you think he’d give me the same courtesy?
February
Can you believe we once had a premier who looked like Neil Diamond? It already feels like a bygone era.
March
Hoo boy, there was a time when the mere suggestion of Albertans cutting back slightly and living within our means caused an uproar. This, of course, was before oil was devalued to the point you could buy a barrel of the stuff on the bottom shelf of a Giant Tiger for a handful of change. Yet another boom pissed away …
April
Whenever I was short on ideas, the Sun News Network was there to provide me with material. Good night, sweet network of hate.
May
As part of my GigCity contract, I must make ONE Bullwinkle’s reference a year. On a side note, there is depressingly little evidence on the Internet such restaurants existed. YouTube is home to countless local car commercials from the 80s but not one Bullwinkle’s birthday party video. C’mon children of the 1980s, get on it!
June
KISS fans will not agree on where the band’s first Edmonton concert was. Some say it was at NAIT, others say it was the Dinwoodie. Gene Simmons himself said in a National Post interview it was at the Jubilee Auditorium. The mystery continues.
July
Penning hot bars is much, much harder than I thought it’d be, despite what Iggy Azaela would have you believe. Could this be the first comic strip to reference popular hip-hop lyrics website Rap Genius? Someone who shared this on Tumblr attempted to shame me for comparing Stephen Harper to KARL Marx, obviously not reading the brilliant little Genius Annotation I penned. Kids these days.
August
Yet another idea for a Fringe play I just tossed out there for free. My dream version of the Danielle Smith Story would be a musical with drag queens. Maybe next summer. The Wildrose Sloth makes a cameo appearance. Where is he when Albertans need him the most?
September
The original concept for this strip was that riders of the controversial Metro LRT Line would be given rifles to fend off the same train-attacking bandidos from the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre but I was afraid the attackers would be misconstrued as something else.
October
In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not a big hockey fan. I’m more interested in the creepy relationship Edmonton fans have with the Oilers, which borders on delusional. That being said, that McDavid dude sure is something.
November
Hey Cats and Kittens, let’s try to be nice to one another. After all, we’re all just trying to get through this thing called life.
December
Now that the hype has died down, I can safely say I was a wee bit disappointed.
