It's a Magical World. Or something like that. You know what I mean.

(From Checkerboard Nightmare Click for full sized IT'S OVER!!!)

I feel, here at the end of all things (or at least the end of things CxN), like I should say a few things about Checkerboard Nightmare. CxN was one that I got into fairly late, for me, at least, and at first it didn't make much of an impression. It was weird, broke the fourth wall like crazy, and the story... holy cow. Is there a story?

Not really, I quickly figured out. But then, it started to grow on me. Because, like Goats, it has the concept of taking the weird stuff that Kris Straub thinks up and just putting them down and they're funny because they're just so random. This was "What part of 'Ninja' didn't you understand?" and the overclocked lemon and the panties of potency all over again.

I found that I liked Chex. I felt for Lyle and how he had to put up with him. Vaporware was just perfect as the token robot of the strip. And the rest of the cast was just great.

Just the idea of a character named Schrodinger the Quantum Cat is something that just makes me giggle. The Unraveled is a sentient godlike fetus, and "if that doesn't make you laugh," to quote Josh Sortelli, "it will probably make you cry." I started going around saying things like "Don't Drugs" and confusing my friends. Heathrow and Smacky (which is fun to type, by the way. Heathrow and Smacky) doing their whole vaudeville thing was just irresistable. The hard action squad parodies made me laugh like crazy, because they were spot on. And Dr. Hot.

In other words, it was funny.

And now it's ending.

That is, it's really ending (unless Kristofer Straub is pulling our leg in a rather gigantic way, which I wouldn't put past him. In that case I'm going to look kind stupid, aren' t I?) not just fake ending, which it has done before. Four times in one week.

This is really the end. And, in the true spirit of the strip, they say what I thought. That they're going out in the way that they came in. It's Chex, and it's Lyle. They're standing there, Chex says something stupid, Lyle rebutts. Chex says something crazy.

And the punchline is perfect. Plus, it's a Calvin and Hobbes reference.

If I gave buscuits. Kristofer Straub would get one.

And it would most certainly be one of the tasty-tastiest.

Hats off to Mr. Straub, ladies and gentlemen. He made it through, and we liked it. I, for one, am sorry to see CxN go, and that means that he succeeded.