You know how there's some comic strips you love (Boondocks, For Better Or For Worse), some comics you hate (we've never liked Rex Morgan, M.D.), and some comics you hate but accidentally get sucked into reading (the shining example of this for us is the execrable Luann)? Well, the Chron announced today they're cancelling one of the strips in our last category, Clear Blue Water by Karen Montague-Reyes.

We personally never really warmed up to Montague-Reyes's drawing style, or the weird plotlines involving what looked like a gay African-American Republican superhero, but our eye did inexorably get drawn to the strip every single day (and we do kind of wonder what's going to happen to little autistic Seth). We're also a little sad that one of the rare strips drawn by a woman, and one of the rare strips drawn by a person of color about a multiracial family, is getting the axe.

The Chron has an odd history with its comic strips -- check out the checkered history of Bill Griffith's critically acclaimed Zippy the Pinhead comic, first cancelled after a methodologically-suspect survey; then the slew of angry letters, including one from R. Crumb; the triumphant Dadaist protests outside the Chron by Zippy fans (after the Chron Datebook editors came out in response to the "Save Zippy" picket line and said they'd reinstate the strip, the chanting protestors seamlessly segued back to "Cancel Zippy! Cancel Zippy!"); and then its second, less hoopla-ed cancellation last March, despite pleading from Garry Trudeau (who, incidentally, came in at number one in the Chron comic poll). Zippy was replaced by Pearls Before Swine; you can still read Zippy in the hard copy of the Examiner.

Clear Blue Water is being replaced by a strip by Chronicle favorite Phil Frank, called Elderberries, about the perils of getting older. Also, comics watchers should note that Datebook ran a cranky letter a few days ago about how Bad Reporter is "ugly," so fans of the genius Don Asmussen should get their protest signs and angry letters to the editor ready.