I'm rewriting this for the umpteenth time, in different ways, yet saying the same thing -- that the party's over, kiddies! Since I was born in 1928 -- and was just old enough to applaud the first comic books in the early and mid-1930's, I've witnessed the best and worst of the form from then to now -- I loved the medium of the comic book as I did the syndicated comic strip in its countless forms, subjects, treatments -- in my time. Now in the autumn or winter of my life, my eyes have seen the bad drive out the good, the terminal deterioration and all-but-lost/dead adventure strip -- and the fun and magic, and delicious innocence and surprises in the comic book; which, unless room is made for such again, will not, cannot, should not, survive.



The ugly, mean, vile, banal, twisted, sick, bloody celebration of torture, rape, cruelty, filth, demonic and socio-political psycho-babble -- and death -- is disgusting stuff to me -- and it's our youngest writers/cartoonists/editors cranking out this garbage! Which is sub-anti-human drek, devoid of original thought or of moral, ethical values -- it is hopeless fatalism, nihilism, anarchy, pointy-headed anti-everything gibberish -- and most of it dares to label itself 'adult' -- 'for mature readers' -- etc, ect -- which is nonsense!



Much more 'adult and mature' are the stories no one can, or will, write about and illustrate: Joy, wonder, love honor, humor, wit, intelligence, invention, compassion, trust, respect, duty, character, sacrifice, sentiment, family, discovery, exploration, history, the myriad peoples, customs, and stories abounding out there in the world -- human stories!



It's just too easy and predictable to grind out incessant repetitions of the doom and gloom, post-armageddon bilge, garbage anti- and non-heroic bumbling 'heroes', to feed the sickness of its own making -- damn how well it may be written or drawn! It's garbage! Created by the young for the younger and youngest readers -- who, for twenty years of it, almost two generations now -- keep buying it! It's beyond me! I fear for our future -- if we're to have one (?) -- if such is 'entertainments' for our fathers and leaders of tomorrow! What might their offspring be like, then, I wonder.



Nope, sorry -- I see no future for us, for them, for comics, tv, movies, etc, unless we kick 'sick', and give kids back their childhood years of innocence, hope, faith, joy, wonder, morals, morale, just plain good clean fun --



The sick kick plagues comics everywhere, east to west, from Japan to England to Europe to here --(I don't know about our Southern Latin neighbors)-- we've had enough of desolation of spirit and shock to our senses. The comic book is, in the hands of today's worst practitioners and proselytizers of this mind-set, committing suicide! and murder! of its traditions, roots!

It cannot stand --
As it is, it should not!



A pox on it, and those who uglify children's minds and senses and expectations with their miasmic miserable muck and mayhem!

And the pale horses they rode in on!

'Cursed be the fool who destroys wonder!

Remember?

I do . . .

© 1991 Alex Toth

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