My Back Pages

Print is important and always will be. Secret messages are sent on paper; on computers, they have to be heavily encrypted. This still doesn’t work as well as something that has to be photographed before someone burns or swallows it.

I’d call it a safe bet that money will always be printed, from elaborate etchings.

It is illegal in America to burn or otherwise destroy currency. Since 2000, new watermarks and patterns have been added, to make counterfeiting totally impossible. That’s how important these little rectangles of printed linen are. 

By association, books and periodicals are also important; it feels improper to burn or destroy them. Not out of any higher calling. Out of the possibility that within all those printed words and images, there might be something crucial that we overlooked.

On the last page of the first Bands I Useta Like magazine, I included a seemingly nonsensical “advertisement” for a job selling it, much like the old Grit ads in comic books. The fortunate few who have a copy already know about this.

You won’t get the message looking at it on a screen. You have to print it out and hold it in your hands. I designed it that way. Print does not capitulate to the digital world; it’s the other way around. A phone is no substitute for a paperback. Anyone who says differently is trying to sell you electronics.

For the third issue, I made the messages overt, and stuck them right on the front page. I worry about you. This is a diabolical year.

You won’t need to print that one out, it’s pretty straightforward. This is the point we have reached as a culture.

It’s not that I couldn’t submit my work to MAD magazine, it’s that MAD is now owned by a major corporation, and anything I submitted would be second-guessed and focus-grouped. Not by editors; by people who represent the brand. Corporate suits only concerned with the bottom line, and the company image. 

Ergo, anything MAD published of mine would be in no way representative of my work, only theirs. It would become their “intellectual property”.

So- why don’t I submit my work to one of MAD‘s competitors?

Because it’s illegal for them to even exist. 

MAD is owned by DC, which is owned by Warner Brothers. A magazine similar to MAD‘s format would be issued a cease and desist warning. As with video games, no one dreams of uttering the word “monopoly”. The End.

The National Lampoon of my youth is long gone. Contributors who railed against Richard Nixon now support a far worse candidate, and like some current comedians, they make one thing clear.

Once the economic recession hit, their corporate masters pulled their chains in tight.

That’s all it is. No respectable humorist should rally behind a fucking politician, even if they’re related. Comedians exist to guard the people from government, with wit and cunning. The ones telling you to “get with the program” are sold out and evil. They work for a company in bed with a candidate. THE END.

That’s as much as I can tell you online. Things are so bad right now, the only thing you can trust is the printed page.

That’s good.