A Remembrance of Pigswill Past

“Champagne quality without the champagne price.” The ad on the back cover of the first issue of Epic Illustrated (spring 1980) is a reminder of some of the worst mornings of my teenage life. My Champale moments led to a steady stream of neon vomit and a general sense that by drinking this “Extra Dry” or “Pink” pigswill I was no longer celebrating life but rather welcoming a kind of death... at least until I discovered Bartles & Jaymes. Oh, what a world of variety (of vomit) those wine coolers introduced to me!

Liberals Lambasting Liberals

Words are speaking louder than actions... and this might be our undoing in 2020.

I’m wondering if the liberal backlash against liberals (some of which I’ve experienced in academia) is going to stall any momentum we’re gaining. Lefties like James Gunn (the director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies), a person with a solid history of supporting humanistic goals and ideals, but undermined by his juvenile attempts at boundary-pushing via Twitter, was revealed by the far right media to be a lousy provocateur. He tweeted some really stupid shit a decade ago. Still, he has been fired (I know, boo hoo) along with many others who’ve said and tweeted some really stupid shit despite living and acting differently. Is this, in some twisted political maneuvering, validating the right’s view of the left? Easily offended Snowflakes all?! We need to chill the fuck out, look deeper, dance the mea culpa dance, and apologize when necessary because it’s getting ridiculous. Some on the left will start to move to the center or even, shudder, the right just for shelter. With the magnificent groundswell of young liberals storming (and saving!) the Democratic party, this might also be the time to forgive and fortify.

Let's go beyond Twitter and Facebook and embrace this tired cliché anew: Actions speak louder than words.

W.W.R.D.? [What Would Ronnie Do?]

From my copy of Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition Unabridged, printed in Springfield, Mass., U.S.A., 1946. This is how we defined and understood the term “traitor” after WWII: “... specif., one who violates his allegiance and betrays his country; one who, in breach of trust, delivers his country to an enemy...”

Is the definition lost to us now? It used to be that the Republican Party stood as staunch defenders of America (even as we debated, within and without our borders, its principles). Seems like the time has arrived when many lefties like myself actually long for the G.O.P. of yesteryear.

Oh, if only Reagan could resurrect himself and his party.

The New Revolution Will Be Advertised in Four Colors

Since its proto-era, cartoons and comics books have embraced social and political agendas (often of the left-leaning variety). Exploding WWII propaganda across its pages in the 40s; cowering in the corners of the Red Scare and hogtied by religious and right wing political fervor in the 50s [The CODE! The dreaded CODE!]; earnestly addressing social issues in the 60s (mostly thanks to Stan and the "King"); embracing subculture and sneakily promoting elements of universalism in the 70s (partly thanks to one of my favs, Tony Isabella); flipping the bird at the establishment in the 80s; sucking its thumb in the 90s [Worst. Decade. Ever.]; commercializing the idea of the “Other” in the Aughts; and, I suppose, galvanizing itself in the teens: Something is now brewing in mainstream comic books... something akin to a REVOLUTION. A more overt sense of resistance is expressing itself in many Marvel, some DC, and quite a few Image books. My daughter (and her dad with a horrifying “case of arrested development” (-- Hemingway)) still reads some of the best of these books and the new _X-Men: Red_ is the ideal representation of what “conventional” comics can inspire in readers. The most recent issue, #5, by Tom Taylor and Mahmud A. Asar reminds my genes (the part that is European and Russian Jew), my ideology (ummm… far left), and my (lack of) belief structure (pluralistically plural with a heaping dose of Pope Francis) that the fight is on! I’m beyond thrilled that my 16+ year old daughter can find an ideological similitude in the comic books she’s reading. The New Revolution is in four colors. As Jean Grey(-Summers) (a.k.a., Phoenix) says in the last panel of the most recent issue, "We're going to crush the lies. We're going to weaponize the truth." Check it out: