Muddying the "Clear Blue Water"

The Chronicle has gone and done it again. "It" being messing up the comics page.

Phil Frank, the creator of the longtime Chronicle strip Farley, has teamed up with writer Joe Troise to create a new syndicated comic that taps into something we all have in common: We're all getting older and, as the saying goes, it beats the alternative.

Set in a retirement home, the Elderberries is about five friends who deal with the inevitability of their own aging process with a combination of wit and wordplay.

The new strip, which appears daily and Sunday, will replace Clear Blue Water, which never really caught on with readers. We hope that Elderberries will.

Elderberries is not really doing it for me so far, but I'm willing to give it time, because I like Phil Frank, and the title comes from a Monty Python movie. Sometimes strips just need time.

However, Clear Blue Water is also one of those strips that needs time to grow on you. My initial reaction was that the drawing style was very weak. However, as time has gone on, I've become fond of the characters, amused by the exchanges between the married couple at the heart of the strip, and caught up in the storylines (does their son really have autism? will the twins be born OK? Will Eve make it through her pregnancy without throwing something heavy at Manny? Is Fluff Boy really down with the fluff?

I will be reading Clear Blue Water online from now on, I guess. I also need to write to the Chronicle and express my ire (and my strong desire that they deep-six the puzzlingly unfunny Pearls Into Swine) rather than just bitch about it on my blog..