And add:
“That’s really why this book is so impressive. So many books are full of that self-obsessed, annoyingly earnest navel-gazing. And then so many OTHER books try to overcompensate by being so arch and ironic that they stop being about anything. This one avoids either extreme, and ends up being a completely sincere message about tolerance and acceptance without being plodding or humorless, and without just making fun of everything because it’s afraid to actually say something.”

“All that said, 99% of indie comics just leave me cold. I’m just too much of a cynic to remember the beauty of personal expression, when they so often are nothing more than variations on the theme of “life is hard for me because I’m different.” They never seem to appreciate that life is hard for everyone, because everyone is different, and the paradox that feeling alienated is the one thing everyone has in common.”

I say:

“I largely feel the same way about independent comics. When I first read them, I thought “OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD this is so new and different”, but now when I read some of them I think: “Oh, this is like Ghost World with talking fish” or “Christ, just shut up. Get some beer, watch some porn, watch some Wheel of Fortune, come on! Snap out of it!”. Course, this is all a big generalization … it’s a huge genre, if its a genre at all … but indie comics often leave me cold as well.”