Oddly enough, I had read almost all of the strips in Explainers, the newish collection of early Jules Feiffer cartoons, back in my misspent proverbial. I’m not sure what collection I had hold of from what library. I know I had a couple of great, great collections, including one that divided the strips by who was President (from Ike through to Jimmy or possibly Reagan, I don’t remember). Loved that stuff.
Re-reading (I was hoping to find a bunch of stuff I hadn’t read, as with The Complete Peanuts 1953-1954, mixed in with the stuff I remembered, but I didn’t find any that seemed new to me), I was struck by how seventies these fifties-sixties comics seemed. There was a very cynical, very nasty-minded attitude about sex and gender differences, very much disillusioned and brutal. I didn’t like them.
Oh, there were quite a few that I really did like, and I maintain that they are great works, in their way, but they rub me wrong, these days. I was a very cynical teenager, I think—or perhaps I was not very cynical at all, so that the cynicism of others was more entertaining to me and less depressing. Well. I wound up returning the collection to the library without finishing the last fifth or so of it. I meant to finish it, but I never got around to it, and then the thing was overdue.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.