Comments on: It is to laugh

By: edwin decker

edwin decker — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:43:07 +0000

Ok, Richard, the last word is all yours. Lucky for me, I agree with everything you wrote (especially the part about comics being a legitimate art form) so I won’t have to fight the urge to contradict you.

JY, I apologize if my vaginalogue upset you. Again, I was just trying to be silly and funny. I guess we are just on different planets when it comes to sense of humor.

By: richard

richard — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:49:41 +0000

This topic has been dragged on way too long, but like everyone I want the last friggin’ word:
“Tragic” was a bit of hyperbole, something which all posters here have used, but yeah, I’m real disappointed that most alternative papers give the cold shoulder to cartoons, which are no less legit an art form than music, painting or literature.
I fondly remember a quote from Calvin and Hobbes: “Your grandfather takes cartoons awfully seriously.” “Yeah, we’re looking to put him in a rest home.” C&H author Bill Watterson reversed the newspaper trend of shrinking comic strips and demanded papers give him more space. Some dropped him, most didn’t dare. He’s my hero for that alone.
From what I can see on Ed’s website he’s an artist/poet himself, and his view is apparently that artists can’t have this the-world-owes-me attitude, which is respectable. But as an alternative newspaper editor myself (we devote a full page to comics) I don’t let other newspapers off the hook. It’s not the audience that dictates what goes into most papers. It’s business decisions, very short-sighted ones. Alt papers were created as a medium more attuned to the arts and they’re blowing it. Might be part of the reason they’re dropping like flies.

By: JY

JY — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:58:19 +0000

Ed- seeing as how you brought my vagina into the discussion with your penultimate post, I am going to have to cut you off at this point. Don’t let the door hitcha!

By: edwin decker

edwin decker — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:49:51 +0000

“tragic”? Really? See, this is exactly what I’ve been talking about. Not to leap at you Richard, you seem nice enough to me (I think I like being called a woofy bear though i’m not sure what it means) but I reserve the word tragedy for, you know, tragedies.

Cartoons, like everything else in the media, get exactly the amount of space they deserve – which is to say, the audience dictates what they want to read and how much of it. To complain that you’re not getting enough space means that you are not appreciating the space that you were afforded in the first place.

By: JY

JY — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:20:38 +0000

Your check is in the mail, Richard.

By: richard

richard — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:57:05 +0000

Getting back to the original point, I always have found it tragic that alt weeklies generally give as little space as possible to comics and have by and large missed the chance to be the medium for such a vibrant art form. So I side with Jason, though Ed is quite the woofy bear.
Still I have to ask why Jason is rushing to the defense of a vastly inferior cartoonist. Maybe it’s because I’ve got an untrained eye, but Red Meat looks like it takes about 5 minutes per strip to produce while every episode of “Deep Fried” looks like it should be on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Yet Red Meat gets far more circulation than Deep Fried.

By: edwin decker

edwin decker — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:47:37 +0000

So your “piece” has spoken eh? That’s funny because my piece talks also.

Thanks for the last word, however I concur, we have beat this thing dead now, my last word probably came about 50 words ago. I’ve nothing new to add, except to say I had a good time arguing about this, and that I clearly defeated all comers. Hopefully your vagina isn’t smarting too much from all this. LOL. Peace.

By: JY

JY — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:58:43 +0000

1) I don’t know what sinister connotations “rag tag” has for you, but that sounds like a little harmless self-effacement to me.

2) Do you somehow think Charles Schulz is the industry standard for alt weekly cartoonists? Because I haven’t seen a Bug-Eyed Earl balloon in the Macy’s parade yet. I know this seems incredible, but it is possible to be a professional cartoonist and still have a modest income.

3) And still you return to “slaved”. Do you have cotton under your fingernails or something, that you don’t want anyone else to use that word?

I think I get it now. Decrypting Cannon’s intent word by word, you have arrived at this secret message visible only through a pair of Hoffman lenses:

“… where a reptilian cartel of highly disciplined propagandists, cloned from the neurons of Josef Goebells himself, have groomed humanity for half a millennia to prepare you for a lifetime of slavery in our Queen’s fetid honeycomb.”

You seem to have an exaggerated and, I think, self-loathing opinion of freelancers as spoiled and carefree, as if we don’t hustle every day to make ends meet like the rest of the working world. Maybe you write for a hobby, but some people have made a career of what they love. The fact that it is a career does not mean, however, that it is either exalted or protected. Does Cannon resort to a note of pleading? Perhaps. But that is what it means to have no protector between you and fickle fate. You have to appeal to the mob, and throw yourself at their mercy a little.

This conversation is lurching into flame war territory, so I will consider my piece spoken and leave the last word to you.

By: edwin decker

edwin decker — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:24:52 +0000

It’s not just the word slaved. It is the tone throughout the piece. Indeed the very first sentence – the thesis – is rife with whine that goes far beyond the word slaved.

“… where a handful of ragtag scribblers like myself have slaved, for very little money if you ever wondered, to bring you a laugh or two…”

Ragtag? Very little money? Slaved? To bring you a laugh or two? Gimme a break. Perhaps if it were slaved alone, i would’ve been making a mountain out of a molehill, but in context, that sentence is a giant weepy whinefest, as is the rest of the piece.

By: JY

JY — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:11:23 +0000

If satire is what he does best, I think I’ll avoid his cooking. As to the subject of “whininess”, I have yet to see anyone actually quote Max Cannon in an effort to illustrate this point. The best that has been proffered is his use of the word “slaved”, which I am already on record as pointing out was Ed making a mountain out of a molehill.

I am a little thrown by the tendency of Ed’s defenders (read: you and you alone, fanboy) to throw out the word “whiney” at the drop of a hat. To alert is not to whine. To complain is not to whine. To bitch in a needy way is to whine, and I do not think that you can demonstrate that either Max Cannon’s petition or the critique that has followed on the heels of Ed’s screed is genuinely whiney.