I find it interesting that in that conversation, it’s the answer-collector who’s asking most of the questions, and the question-collector who’s answering them.
Not surprising. Each was trying to keep what they found more valuable.
I read that, and as much as I value curiosity and flexibility, the cardboard characterization drove me up the wall. Ooh, ooh, look at the fat old guy spouting words that only a smug teenager would imagine an old guy saying! The terrible characterization, IMO, overshadows whatever profundity there might be in its preachy point.
The surrealness of the drawings made me pass over the simplistic characterization. I didn’t peg the eyeball guy as a teen though. Indeed, the tendency to jump to quick answers is a high school/sophomoric one. Though too many never outgrow it.
Also, the intellectual quality of the strip surpassed that of the great bulk of alternative US comics. I wouldn’t call it profound; I might call it a reasonably concise philosophical exposition. It may have been slow for a comic strip, but it was pretty quick for an essay.
Grading on a curve, I’d give it an A. No special awards or standing ovations, just an A.
My head hurts.
Yeah, it struck me that way, too. Also, signaling to the audience right at the outset that one character is Repellant and Therefore Wrong, and one character is the Author’s Mouthpiece and Therefore Right, is kind of…dull.
Reification of abstracts (here, questions and answers made into ‘collectables’) can sometimes work in a metaphorical way to get across an interesting message. (Though I can’t think offhand of any examples that do this successfully. Must be some…) Here, the distinction between questions and answers just seems artificial and pointless.
I do applaud the aspiration to offer something cerebral in comics form, though.
What it seemed like to me is that the dude who collected questions was totally satisfied in doing so, and not at all curious about the other guy. He was proselytizing. Underlying his self-satisfied philosophy was the fact that he didn’t actually know all that much, thus his disdain for people who had spent some time pursuing answers.
In other words, he himself had jumped to a quick answer (“Answers are contemptible”) rather than a slow answer (“I’m going to spend my life collecting careful data”). And that glorification of answerlessness strikes me as supremely adolescent.
Also, a better author would’ve spent more time characterizing the questions and answers, I think :).
Did Obama plan Bengazi? I’m just asking questions!
Questions/answers, like female/male and mind/body, are all examples of false dichotomies. Each is a “simplistic characterization,” and needs to coexist to survive.
A one-eyed two winged sitting sepia people-baiter!
I once had the joy of overhearing two guys talk about science. One guy said that the value of science is knowing things. The other guy said that the value of science is learning things.
Isn’t it obvious that both are right?
Thanks, astro! That totally fucking rocked!