Blue Monday (2000)

Welcome to Blue Monday.

What is Blue Monday?

Blue Monday is mathematically the most depressing day of the year.

In 2004 Cliff Arnall, a tutor at the Center for Lifelong Learning, declared the third Monday in January the day we as humans in the northern hemisphere feel the lowest. The holidays are over, sunlight is at a premium and the winter lay ahead.

Arnall even calculated why we feel so “blue”: [W+(D-d] x T^Q} – [M x N_a] with “W” standing for weather, “D” standing for debt, “d” standing for monthly salary, “M” for motivational levels and “Na” standing for the need to take action.

According to the Holidays Calendar, this has since been debunked and attributed to a promotional travel campaign by Sky Travel.

No matter, Four Color Holidays is accepting Blue Monday as an official non-holiday.

Blue Monday (2000) The Kids Are Alright

Representing such is the comic book Blue Monday, taken from the song Blue Monday. Not the Blue Monday as crooned by Fats Domino or the White Lion tune penned in 1991. The Blue Monday in question is by the post punk scene group New Order released March 7, 1983 as a 12-inch single. Over three million copies were sold.

Our Blue Monday was created by Chyynna Clugston Flores chronicling the exploits of the loosely based avatar Bleu L. Finnegan and her high school friends in the early 1990s.

Flores published one-page dramas and short stories in Dark Horse Presents, Action Girl Comics and Oni Double Feature from 1997 to 2000. As the new millennium dawned, Flores saw her creation expand and Oni released a mini series called The Kids are Alright. It was followed by three more over the next five years and one-shot in 2009.

After a six-year hiatus, Blue Monday was given a new life at Dark Horse. The Kids Are Alright appeared in 2016 followed by Absolute Beginners that December and In between Days in July of the following year. Painted Moon was solicited, but never shipped.

Flores hasn’t given up on her wayward cast of misfits, promising to continue their exploits post high school and into young adulthood.

Whatever the fate of Blue Monday the comic book, we can choose to embrace the non-holiday either by wallowing in the miasma of day with sad music, staying home and refusing solace. Or, we can battle back the blues with some creature comforts.

However you celebrate/commiserate, maybe check out these books; what’s a little more debt this time of year?