The first Over the Hedge comic strip - published June 12, 1995

Like most of my pants, it's hard to believe that Over the Hedge is two decades old. Also like my pants, there have been some changes over the years -- Hammy the squirrel became Sammy before reverting to Hammy, after some confusingly amusing business involving mirror worlds -- but the tone of the strip remains as youthful and spry as the pants closet of a much more fashionable person than your author. That's in part attributable to the universal appeal of the main characters' personalities: RJ, the conniving schemer and smooth operator whose only goal in life is to secure an unending flow of highly preserved, non-natural snack food; Verne, the intellectual observer perpetually out of step with the demands of life; and Hammy, a being of pure chaos energy barely concealed inside an ill-fitting squirrel suit. Though these three friends could probably survive apart to truly enjoy life they need each other, and they know it.

The main source of their enjoyment is humans, whom the animals have ample time to watch and analyze from their perch in the suburban wilderness. And that's the other key to the strip's success, I think. Society has changed a lot in 20 years -- when Hedge started, "Murder, She Wrote" was still delighting the tens of millions of people who regularly watched network TV -- but human nature remains stubbornly the same, in all its bewilderingly cussed glory. RJ, Verne and Hammy have been faithful and incisive spectators of us, by turns amused, fascinated and disgusted, and they seem all the more human because of it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time I bought some new pants.

Read Over the Hedge daily here.

-Reed