What's your interpretation of this comic strip?

Yes. Exactly.

Let’s just all be sure to ignore that the movie also says half the true meaning of Christmas is to love each other, because that wouldn’t undermine the “Jews hate Christmas” interpretation at all.

I’ve don’t have anything substantive to add, except to comment on the discussion itself – as an aspiring web comic author, I find the idea of a single strip generating 4 pages of discussion both exhilarating and terrifying.

I think every artist wants his or her work to provoke recognition and discussion on some level, but to see it dissected to such a degree seems… I don’t know… a little obsessive? (Although not altogether inappropriate, considering that the nature of this forum is to discuss art and entertainment).

Maybe it’s just me. I put quite a few hours of thought into every strip I create, but at the same time I fear most of them would fall apart at this level of scrutiny. I think there’s also a deep down, irrational fear that my strip might unintentionally betray some aspect of my personality or emotional makeup that I’d rather remain hidden from the general public.

Which is why I’ll never make a good web comic author. :slight_smile: As Ogre mentioned earlier, art by committee sucks, and an artist who over thinks his work falls into the same trap. With enough second-guessing, any idea can eventually seem unfunny, stupid, inappropriate, or a complete waste of time.

Slightly off topic: Gordon, what medium do you use for your strip? It appears that you use some kind of vector drawing program like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator, but I can’t be sure. What made you decide on this method, verses something drawn by hand, scanned, and photoshopped?

It feels unfair, but people focus on the more interesting stuff, and sometimes that means that a lot of what’s good is ignored. Personally I quite like the strips overall, though the one in question didn’t appeal to me; I don’t think it was antisemitic, though it can be read that way, it’s just that I didn’t think it was that funny. Many of the rest are quite amusing.

By the way, do you have any plans to increase your update schedule? I’d certainly like more than one a week.

I use Illustrator to do Multiplex. I first thought of doing Multiplex as a Flash cartoon, but I never bothered to learn Flash and just decided to do it as a comic instead. And I just kept that Flash cartoon/“paper cut-out” look for the comic, because I liked how it looked. It gives the strip sort of a South Park-ish look (even if the humor I’m going for is closer to the Office).

Capt. Carrot: I may have a bonus strip or two in the near future, but there are no plans to do the strip more than once a week on a regular basis, at least not at this point. I’m working on an adaptation for a literary magazine when I’m not working on Multiplex. But perhaps next year, I’ll be able to step it up a bit.