Interesting speech. I should mention, however, that I always considered the Skunk Sisters and Zig Zag (I am unfamiliar with the other characters) "fun characters" rather than highly-developed ones what are supposed to be taken seriously. Certainly Max Black Rabbit gave me the impression that Zig Zag was meant for fun entertainment (despite her official background) and wasn't meant to be taken too seriously; artists could have her do pretty much want they wanted. Same story with the Skunk Sisters; I cannot imagine Jim Hardiman thought that three sexpot sisters who often had incestuous sex with each other all the time were meant to be viewed as realistic people either.
Which is not a bad thing. In fact, I hate when artists create essentially non-serious characters and then take them uber-seriously. Happened most famously with Dave Sim and Cerebus. The comic was funny when he was a parody of Conan the Barbarian, but when the author started to make Cerebus "high art" with supposed "deep meaning", he got pretentious, boring, and unfunny, and most of his readership quit in disgust, including me. Same with Omaha the Cat Dancer when Reed Waller made his porn comic into a laughable morality play and Omaha into an unrealistic "feminist" hero. (You cannot be a feminist and play to base male pleasures; even Eric Schwartz was aware of this.)
If Jim Hardiman had lived decades longer and kept the Skunk Sisters as light entertainment characters, that would have been much more satisfactory for me than his trying to turn them into high art. As the old saying goes, you cannot have high art without low art. Not every play has to be Shakespeare, either.
Long Tom
Received on Sat Feb 17 2018 - 11:58:25 CST