I have read comic strips my entire life and do not understand people who don't. These days I love the comic strip Pearls Before Swine in particular. I need my Pearls and I need my coffee before I go to work in the morning. I need them even if I am not going to work. They both make me feel better. The strip is full
of sweet, kind, smart, and stupid characters. There is an "Angry Bob"; there is even a duck that is prone to excessive violence. But it is "Rat" who is at the center of things, who makes my day with his anthropomorphic misanthropism -- and puts a Rat's distance between me and my own misanthropic and cynical self. These days Rat is busying himself sprinkling schadenfreude on the heads and hopes of others. He once spent time consigning others to a Box O' Stupid People. He also has hit people (he knows they deserve it, that is never an issue) upside the head with various objects. My wife made me one of those and George W. Bush is there to this day. I even keep a collection of Pearls strips on my nightstand to put me in the proper mood before I go to sleep. Comics are good adult company (they are not for children). They make me a better man; at least they make me appear to be a better man. Sometimes people even mistake me for Mr. Nice Guy. Rat doesn't even have to pretend.
Pogo, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County all have kept me company at one time or another. One of them is living on borrowed time, the rest live on the Internet.
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