Okay, I admit it, I totally set the wrong tone for the post below. There are thoughts I should have fleshed out more to have them better understood. But it was a journal post, not a polished essay.

As was Dylan’s, and I’m not trying to make out that Dylan is doing anything more than state her own experiences and opinions. Nor am I trying to make out that most, some, any cartoonists think “Boy! Those prose writers have it easy, the lucky bastards!”

Honestly, if I had gotten my usual traffic, about ten or twenty a day, most looking for “free sex comics”, I probably would have pulled down the post, done some re-adjustments and slapped it back up. Like include a statement that Dylan sees most definitely the difference between a story meant for prose and one meant for comics, something that thrills me no end. But I had also hoped you had read all that for yourselves.

The funny thing is, I was much more interested in the time equals value debate and how I’m annoyed that’s how the end result of comics vs. prose is compared. How the impact of each is different and is hard to compare fairly.

But I have enjoyed the totally unintentional debate it has started. Though I don’t agree with all that is being said, I find it interesting and stimulating and it’s helping me define my feelings on the matter.

Not that I totally disagree either, with both the statements and the emotion behind them. Like Scott’s example of how prose writers have certain minimizing options cartoonists don’t. Granted. And I am amused that he had thought up the most difficult thing to draw that he could: “The sun rose over Bombay, scattered by the chrome of ten thousand bicycles”.

But let’s be fair, comics has its own “minimizing options”. Like some of the panel to panel transitions I’ve seen, which can be so beautiful, meaningful and would take thousands of words to convey the same meaning, many pages in the gutter if you will.

Me, personally, not putting words into anyone’s mouth but my own? When I am tired, in pain in all ways possible still struggling with the same panel after 7 hours, near tears, cursing my stupidty and inadequacy, I don’t think “maybe I should just give up and become a prose writer”, (not saying anybody else does either) I usually think more along the lines of, say, forest ranger, traffic cop, electrician, anything where I am not trying to interpret parts of my mind, heart and soul for the world to see.

Because, for me, itÕs all about where you hang your soul. What do you have your identity wrapped up in? I’m not interested in any other approach here than the one where you pour all your effort and heartache into, no matter what the artform.