This is something that always confuses me, because the strip is currently written and drawn by Chris Browne (the son of Dik Browne, the strip's creator), and Chris Browne wrote Raising Duncan - which just happens to be one of my favourite comic strips of all time.
Raising Duncan featured a tubby bearded guy who's a bit of a big kid at heart and his not-quite-as-tubby wife - sound familiar? The same guy wrote two comic strips simultaneously featuring ostensibly very similar characters. One charmed the socks off me, and the other leaves me indifferent. I don't know how that works.
I don't want to undersell Raising Duncan buy suggesting it's destined to be compared to Hägar. It's quite it's own beast. It's a contemporary (early 2000s) story about a professional couple who have pets instead of children - and it's an entirely joyful take on the idea.
The main characters are a pair of authors, B.D. Kelly (aka, Big Daddy or Bruce, the romance novelist) and his wife Adelle (the more successful crime novelist), and their pets Brambly (the cat) and Duncan (the Scottish terrier). B.D. is more mature and less obnoxious than Hägar, and Adelle is more playful and less nagging than Helga. The pets are, oddly, convinced they are in a relationship (at times they sound like an old married couple), but the true joy of the strip lies in the relationship between B.D. and Adelle.
They are clearly playmates as well as husband and wife, and I have to admit that I envy their camaraderie. Helga and Hägar are often at loggerheads with each other, and there is an extent to which their relationship still feels more comfortable in the 1970s (when their strip was originally created), while B.D. and Adelle get along like a house on fire and take turns being the responsible(ish) adult.
If I could move into a comic strip, and move in next door to an existing comic strip family I'd be had pressed to choose between the Kellys and the Pattersons (from For Better or For Worse, which I'll probably rabbit on about another time).
The thing that amazes me most about Raising Duncan at present, however, is the fact that you can't buy the comics - but you can read them for free on Go Comics (currently one of the most annoying web page designs I have the misfortune to encounter in my day).
It's bizarre. Browne stopped creating the strip years ago, and you should, by rights, be able to buy the whole collection. I certainly would, and I'm sure I'm not alone. So how is it possible in this day and age that people who would be willing to buy something can't - but you can access it as much as you like if you have the patience to putt up with a crappy web page?
Very odd.
