You know what? I think you’re just trying your damndest to be a thread shitter.
I think you’re just trying to impress everyone with your (imagined) savoir faire in order to mask deep seated feelings of inadequacy.
Like, if everyone says, “That was a great movie,” you’re that one asshole who has to call it “populist tripe,” write a dissertation explaining why, along with a massive dose of barely concealed supercilousness for all the “saps” who thought the movie was good.
We get it. Anyone who’s been in the CS for more than 24 hours has gotten it: art is subjective, and your cup of tea may not be my brand of coffee. But you don’t have to jump into the middle of a thread, in an attempt to piss all over folks who are doing nothing more egregious than sharing a few laughs and fond memories over the works of one of the more popular contemporary cartoonists, to ram the point home.
I’m willing to bet you’re the kind of shitstain who got his ass kicked every day at school, just because of this kind of behavior.
And if you didn’t, you damned well should have, for one of two very good reasons:
You would’ve corrected this behavior, and began acting like a human being with some degree of social graces;
You would’ve ate a bullet by now out of despair of being the Worlds Lonliest Motherfucker.
And what of Gahan Wilson? Walt Kelly? I suppose Shel Silverstien was chopped liver? Of course, Kliban displayed a keen grasp of Hegelian dialectic, but Larson has a certain…oh, I don’t know*…je nais se quois*?
Actually, anyone who engages in ranking artists is probably not suited for any endeavor more strenuous than checking the team listings for “who’s in first?” on the Sports page.
A more intelligent approach is to evaluate any artist for his or her own merits, reserving comparisons for style and technique or intent while keeping “rankings” to oneself to be used only to determine which work one would purchase if one had only enough cash to purchase a single item.
Gahan it is. My memory said The New Yorker, though, but it’s been a quarter of a century at least while since I saw it, so I’m not about to argue the point – especially with a gentleman who, I am sure, has far more expertise in magazines of that ilk than I.
