Monday, February 14, 2005

The Curmudgeon Manifesto


1. Comics From Your Youth Are Always Worse Than You Remember Them Being

2. No Matter How Smart They Are And How Wide-Ranging Their Reading Tastes, All Conversations Between Comics Fans Inevitably Turn To Superheroes

It’s the only common ground between many disparate tastes, and this common ground inevitably defines the dialogue.


3. The Best Newspaper Strips Are Really Only Any Good In Comparison To Their Crappy Peers.
This is regardless of how much you may like Doonesbury, For Better Or For Worse or Boondocks - next to Garfield, Get Fuzzy is a work of staggering genius.


4. Dropping The Cover Price Will Not Save Mainstream Comics.
There is no way that newsstand owners would ever back such a high-maintenance, high-volume and low-profit line.


5. The Amount Of Food That Your Favorite Indie Cartoonist Eats In Any Given Month Is In Direct Proportion To How Much They Sell Out.

Have you ever noticed how skinny Chester Brown is?


6. The Best Manga Will Probably Never Be Translated.
But boy oh boy, we got ten metric shitpiles of violent boy-rape yaoi.


7. The “New Mainstream” Will Probably Not Save Comics – They Just Don’t Have The Resources.
But it sure is fun to watch Larry Young try.


8. Political Cartooning Is A Toothless And Decrepit Old Man Who Needs To Be Put Out Of His Misery
See, the elephant is the Republicans, and the Donkey is the Democrats, and the balloon is deficit spending . . .


9. Comic Books Will Always Be Marginalized.
The general public does not possess the critical capacity to judge the difference between whatever superhero nostalgia/rape “blockbuster” is being hyped and an honest-to-Gosh good comic based merely on the press both types of books get.


And Finally . . .

10. Nothing We Say Matters.

Because in the end, WE as much a part of the problem as THEY are (however it is that you define “WE” and “THEY”).


Have A Nice Day!

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