Saturday, December 13, 2003
The Middle Period of Get Your War On
Adam, Robb and I have split over the hilarity of the middle period in the wonderfully hopeless comic strip Get Your War On(declared as Adam to be roughly sections 16-24). Adam claims, and Robb stands by him, that "[d]uring that period, it seemed to be needlessly obscure and often just plain stupid [...]." They are both wrong! Instead of the usual fight to the death I thought we could spare the loss of valuable Weblog contributors if I gave a needless and short of short analysis of sections 16-24 to settle the manner. I included links to each section and I highly recommend reading the comic in another window in tandem with my comments. Just to make me feel good.
Section 16 - Ok, so this one is not that funny, or funny at all, and by the looks of the second strip the author is seriously lacking in material. Adam and Robb win that round. Although one has to admit that the crossed out computers and the monocle merit a chuckle.
Section 17 - Making fun of Henry Kissinger, the murderous bastard, is always funny. Making fun of him using shitty clip art, funnier.
Section 18 - The use of North Korea as a head, and as a singularity that can talk as one, GENIUS! I also think the critique of National Sanctity of Life day, while not that funny, is perfectly lucid and smart.
Section 19 - This one passes as great for one reason, but I think it is a good reason, the line "Grown-up's did that. Never forget that." in relation to the naming of the Patriot Act.
Section 20 - Ok, not funny. Still it's the one sign of hope, albeit maybe not sincere, in the whole comic series.
Section 21 - This section is full of good stuff. Not as funny as early or later GYWO but smart nonetheless. It's dead on concerning Bush's "Press Conference" before the Iraq War, it echoes my own "crisis" of faith with the "pray harder" comment, and it portrayed the exact feeling I had coming up to St. Patrick's day which also happened to be the scheduled day of war. What kind of country do we live in that we schedule fucking wars? Especially on the day of a major saint for God's sake? At least we were drunk.
Section 22 - I laughed at this one. The "long speech" about being called a hippie over not supporting sanctions and imploring demand that the Iraqi's burn their oil fields and "piss off the right people" gave me a sudden fit of nihilistic joy. Kind of like Sept 11th itself. Or so Jean Baudrillard would say.
Section 23 - Tell me you aren't laughing at this!
Section 24 - I think this was pretty biting concerning the indiscretions of William J. Bennett, the man who wrote The Book of Virtues. Maybe this was only funny to me because I listened to a lot of talk radio when this story broke and I remember the right-wingers, mainly Rush, making a huge deal out of it not being a huge deal.
Well, I think they are funny. And smart. Good God. I'm writing like Josh Marshall now.