You Only Think You Liked It!

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My new cartoon collection, Why Must They Shove It In My Face?, is out! It’s about 200 pages of cartoony goodness, featuring 100 cartoons, plus text pieces and oodles of behind-the-scenes sketches. You can download the PDF if you join my Patreon at the $3 level. In fact, you get to download four different book collections if you join at the $3 level — about 700 pages of material.

(700 hundred pages! See that, brain? I’m not entirely unproductive.)

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Check out the timelapse video of me drawing this comic strip. (If you have pot handy, consider getting stoned for it, that might enhance the experience.)

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This strip was inspired by a kerfuffle in the comics community. A white cartoonist, who had gotten a lot of attention for her award-winning first graphic novel (published by a prestige publisher), posted a comic strip on her Instagram about how comics fans, due to white guilt, felt forced to pretend excitement about the work of presumably undeserving nonwhite cartoonists.

A pseudonymous cartoonist commented on Reddit:

I was a fan of her (mostly her paintings— I’ve never felt very compelled to read her comics to be honest) and it just really sucked to read that comic. I’m in the industry and it felt so extremely pointed at some of my peers. It was so stressful as a POC cartoonist reading all of the positive comments rolling in right after it was posted because I just felt like “wow, is this how people feel about me?” It really, really sucked.

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I’ve always found the right-wing theory that people don’t really like what they like, but are only saying so to appease the “woke,” hilarious. (“You Only Think You Liked It!” might make a good title for the eventual reprint collection). In the last couple of months I’ve been hearing people say this about James Gunn’s allegedly “woke” Superman movie. (“Woke” because of its radical message that empathy and immigration are good things). But there have been many previous examples – I’ve seen similar claims made about Black Panther, The Barbie Movie and HBO’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

There’s also a catch-22 – when “woke” or “diverse” media does well, the anti-woke scolds crawl out of their internet forums to declare that people are just pretending to like it. But when a piece of “woke” media does poorly, the same people crow “go woke, get broke.”

(I ought to define what “woke” means, since I’ve typed “woke” seven times in two paragraphs. Alas, I can’t – at least, not with any specificality – because what’s meant by “woke” is an ever-moving and opportunistic target. But, generally speaking, “woke” means anything to the speaker sees as being too friendly to the interests of women or minority groups.)

The specific dust-up that inspired this comic is obviously a flash in the pan, but the attitude is common enough to be worth drawing a comic about it. Naturally, I considered switching the specifics from comics to a more popular and thus generic feeling art form – novels, say, or movies.

But I’d already thought of panel three, and I was very excited about drawing a comic-within-my-comic. So comics it remained. I tried to write it so that people unaware of the specific case I was responding to (a group which comprises approximately 99.99999999999% of humanity) would still be able to enjoy the strip.

I also thought for a long time about whether criticizing another cartoonist (even without naming her or drawing a caricature of her) was something I even wanted to do. At some level, is this unprofessional of me? And shouldn’t I be aiming my critiques at genuinely famous people, not a relatively unknown cartoonist?

In the end, I decided it was okay (I mean, obviously, since you’re reading this). If political stances people go out of their way to take in public aren’t fair game, what is? And Graham is probably more successful as a cartoonist than me (admittedly a low bar), so it’s not punching down.

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels, plus a tiny “kicker” panel under the bottom of the strip. Each panel features two women talking on a suburban sidewalk. One woman has glasses and a red t-shirt; the other has short dark hair and torn jeans. I’ll call them “RED” and “TORN.”

PANEL 1

Red, angry, is holding out a comic book towards Torn. Torn crouches to examine the comic.

RED: Look! A “diverse” artist’s comic book won an award, but their work is garbage!

TORN: I liked that comic.

PANEL 2

Red tosses the comic away over her shoulder, while producing another comic and handing it to Torn.

RED: You only think you liked it!

RED: No one actually liked it. They just said they did because they’re afraid. Here, read my award-winning comic, it’s actually good.

TORN: Um… Okay.

PANEL 3

In the foreground, we see Torn is reading the comic. In the background, Red continues to rant.

RED: You know why they give awards to middling “diverse” artists? White guilt! It’s pathetic!

PANEL 4

Torn, amused, hands the comic back to Red. Red looks suspicious.

TORN: Have you noticed that when middling white artists win awards, no one thinks that needs an explanation?

RED: Sure, but– Wait, what are you implying?

TINY KICKER PANEL

Torn talks to Barry the cartoonist.

TORN: You’d know all about middling white cartoonists winning awards, right Barry?

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

“Chicken fat” is obsolete cartoonists’ terminology for unimportant (but hopefully fun) details in the artwork.

PANEL 1 – The comic book’s title is “Minor Detail Comix,” and has a sedate dog on the cover. One of the spies from “Spy vs. Spy” is in a hole in a tree in the background. An open can on the ground is labeled “Ant Food” and has a trail of ants leading to it.

PANEL 2 – The dog on the cover of the comic being tossed away now has a panicked expression. The new comic she’s holding out is entitled “Changing Details Comix,” with a skeleton in a suit on the cover.

PANEL 3 – We see some of the panels of the comic Torn is reading. “Hey, wanna have some ill-advised sex? But in an artsy and highbrow way.” “No, I’d rather do it with Mr. Stephen Sondheim.” “I understand. He is the greatest songwriter ever. Maybe I could have sex with Andrew Lloyd Webber instead?”

Also, the Evil Bunny – a character I frequently draw into backgrounds – can be seen in panel 1 of the comic-in-a-comic.

PANEL 4 – The comic now shows the famous painting “The Scream,” and is entitled “Still Changing Comix.”

TATTOO – The tattoo on Torn’s left arm forms a three panel comic strip. In panel one, a moon and a sun, both with smiling faces, face each other across the arm. In panel two, they’re dancing with each other, holding hands, with little hearts floating in the air. In panel four, they’ve floated apart and look heartbroken.