I miss Mondays...
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Graphic Satire has been a mainstay in my life for as long as I can remember. I attribute this to having grown up during an apex period for the print edition.
Whether it was the funny page at the kitchen table. A Mad Magazine providing backseat company on a long drive or that box of discarded Playboys I discovered (and re-discovered) on my paper route. Hilarious words and pictures seemed to grow on (or be discarded in) trees.
I took their scrawl as an invitation to write and draw along, still do.
My love of the medium spanned my academic career, submitting cartoons to my respective campus newspapers. Though my lack of tact, craft or originality left readers with much (a lot) to be desired, the thrill of seeing my half corked cartoons in print was a thing of dreams.
Had I seen the pending print media apocalypse coming, I probably would have savoured it a little more.
Today I often catch myself wondering if the world would be in the same shape if households still received a sheet of funnies to accompany bills and coupons.
Though newspapers still exist and hilarious cartoons grow abundantly online, their readership is niche when compared to the syndicated funny page of days past.
The shared experience of the funny page provided respite through an unspoken acknowledgement. A mutual deflection of the demoralizing crud found in the news, weather and advertorials. Together while apart people with little in common would share a collective chortle before enduring another day without wifi and adequate non-dairy alternatives.
Today its absence can be felt in all we consume. In losing the daily cavalcade of archetypal dum-dums we lose consensus of what constitutes idiot behaviour. If we were still able to point and laugh at Andy Capp’s Mens Rights Activism, Hagar’s Horrible Parenting and Garfield’s do-nothing vitamins…would we even know what a Joe Rogan is?
Ludicrous to suggest Family Circus was the diaper-pin holding society intact. But I know we’d see an uptick in decorum at the supermarket if exhausted parents had to endure a vignette about “Jeffy’s Biggest Ever Boo-Boo” before reading another shit-post about how they’ll never truly retire.
My longing for that collective chortle is why I’m writing this treatise and probably (hopefully) why you’re still reading it.
As you read my words and pictures I hope you make a point to exit out of your feed, minimize your windows, put down that vape and prioritize the act of looking at something silly for no other reason than “It’s nice to look at silly stuff”.
I hope they catch you flat footed and I hope you share them with people who could use a good punch.
-G
