Alas, after 22 years, Lloyd Dangle is retiring Troubletown, one of the finest sociopolitical comics to ever grace “alternative” newspaper pages.

Certain other “leftist” strips in the alt-weeklies are really less about politics and all about making their readers feel superior about themselves. But Dangle’s strip really was about the nonsense of politicians, the X-treme idiocy of the Bush era, the ongoing organized economic violence. And it covered them with wit and even grace.

If (as I believe) every satire contains, within its aesthetic, the world it would rather see, then Dangle’s dystopian panels advocated a contrasting utopia of intelligence, defiance, and principled action.

I’ll miss Troubletown.