Bravo, Pat. Truer words were never spoken. You, sir, are an American hero. It is my fondest hope that with your particular skills and artistic integrity, you will one day be named 'Art Czar' by a future President of the United States.

Then you can flip through all the comics that come out each month, judging them without that time-wasting element that those anti-human intellectuals like to call 'reading.' For too long, 'reading' has been a thorn in our side. In conjunction with other, devious practices like 'writing' and 'thinking,' it has steadily corrupted the youth of our great culture.

Thankfully, we have entered an era when we can do without such underhanded principles. Any age where a serious percentage of young adults gets their news from MTV is, by any sane definition, a Golden one. If we are -truly- lucky, perhaps we can eliminate the cultural bugaboo of 'rational thought' all together. Then we can all live in the peaceful bliss heretofor known only by the lobotomized.

Viva glancing!

As somebody (Kim?) pointedout, 'Millenium' is actually NOT an acceptable spelling for the word in any dictionary. It is incorrect, no matter where you might have seen it used. In point of fact, Millennium was not originally even a caledrical term; it was apocalyptic. The Millennium referred to a period of time in which Jesus would rise ascendant over the world and Satan would be cast down into chains for roughly a thousand years.

The reference made to it in the bible by Christ actually suggested it would start during the lifetime of the people he was addressing. Thus, the starting point could not have been O -or- 1 AD, or even 100 AD. Certainly not 1000 AD.

At the end of the Millennium there would be the Apocalypse and then the final judgement. So the Millennium actually had nothing to do with years ending with 000 or even 001 until medieval times. That calendrical association most likely occured after every wacko-doomsayer's prognostications continued to fail.

Christian

[This message has been edited by Christian Panas (edited 05-06-2000).]

I published a calendar last year called Millenium Fever. I wasn't bothered in the slightest when the misspelling was pointed out to me.

Oh, and by the way, Sam's right. About everything. No, I'm just kidding. Actually I mean about when the millennium ended/starts. Obviously there was no year zero. But even more obviously, neither was there a "year one" (or two or three...). I have absolutely no evidence at hand to back this up and refuse to bother trying to confirm it, but I'd be willing to lay down a stack of mint condition Raw #1's on a bet that the calendar in which it is now May 6, 2000 was not developed and adopted until many many years later than the time when Jesus was supposed to have walked the earth, and how accurate do you think their calculations going backward to square one really were?

And as Pat O'Neil would agree, the fact that "the masses" are "brainwashed" by the huge amount of attention given to the "superficiality" of the number "2000" and won't be going to any insufferably "pretentious" new year's parties this upcoming December supercedes any amount of "intellectual analysis" into the issue. It just the number that's the big deal, guys. That's all.

Wasn't this already settled late last year on the Journal messboard?

Mr. L,

I will comply with your request. It was the request of someone else on these boards for me to place said comment below my name to give credence to my sparring with Thompson.

I would appreciate in the future you would cease and desist your misrepensation of my views. That kind of deceit would not endear you to Harlan either.

There are a number of things Harlan and I would disagree vigorously on. I chose not to discuss such subjects when I spoke to him as I find that neither of us would change the other's mind. And such could commence unnecessary acrimony.

Sam

Please, would you do us all the same favor? For the very same reasons?

[This message has been edited by Greg (edited 05-07-2000).]

Greg,

Would you do the same for me?

Sam

[This message has been edited by Samuel Catalino (edited 05-07-2000).]

>>Most of the Julie-Schwartz edited DC comics of the Silver Age. Russ Manning's Magnus. Hal Foster's Prince Valiant on the strip side, along with both Caniff's and Wunder's Terry and the Pirates. Sugar and Spike. Spider-Man up until Stan Lee stopped writing it. Challengers of the Unknown for the first 25 issues or so.<<

Most of those are good comics, to be sure. But I notice there's nothing on your list that was created within the last 30 years or so. Are there some more recent comics that meet your standards? If not, why not?

Sam wrote (in reference to his flirtation with Holocaust revisionism and how it affected his entente with Ellsion at a recent comics convention): "I chose not to discuss such subjects when I spoke to him as I find that neither of us would change the other's mind. And such could commence unnecessary acrimony.

Good idea, Sam. I would have been really awkward to get up during the q&a after his speech and gush into the microphone, "Hi Mr. Ellison. I'm a huge fan of your work. Tell me, don't you think that the so-called "Holocaust" is nothing more than a hoax perpetrated by the Jewish people on the rest of the world in order to cover up their world domination? Those weren't gas chambers! Gee whillikers, no! They were de-lousing showers. Everybody but Gary Groth knows that." It might have given him, you know, the wrong impression or something.

Later, at the hotel bar, while sipping a carbonated alcolohic lemonade beverage, you could've sidled up to him, re-introduced yourself ("Huh? Oh. You."), and pressed some George Lincoln Rockwell literature into his withered hands, looking him straight in the eye. "I really think you should read this Harlan. It changed my life."

Who knows? Maybe you two could have collaborated on some pamplets to hand out to people at San Diego.

Pat,

If I took a glance at, say, Terry and the Pirates and dismissed it as adolescent, anti-Asian, sexist, typical purile genre adventure crap without reading it (because I know that kind of thing when I see it after all), you would be the first to attack me for that kind of simple-minded, uninformed judgement.

You have a narrow conception of what is acceptable in this medium and you dismiss, without reading it, anything that does not fit your conception of what comics should be. You're a closet elitist, Pat. Admit it and you'll feel better.

BTW, Eightball is exceptional Gen-X nihilism. [img]http://207.69.158.95/ubb/wink.gif[/img]



Sam "Former Friend of Ellison" Catalino,

You know, Sam, if you don't want to be called a Holocaust denier then you might consider not denying the Holocaust.

Pat:>>hree: There just aren't as many of that ind of people as you think there are. I suspect, for instance, that most of the sold copies of Hawking's "Brief History of Time" are sitting unopened on shelves, next to similarly untouched copies of Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow. These are things a certain class of people buy because they think they should, not because they're ever really going to finish them.<<

It's funny, see, 'cause when I was in fourth grade I read Hawking's book. As a matter of fact, me, another kid, and our teacher all simultaniously read it. It certainly wasn't because we thought we should--none of the other fourth graders had read it, the teacher hadn't, and we had no contact with other teachers who might've. We simply saw it in the book cart, urged our parents to buy it. They, too, were unfamiliar with the book. It just looked interesting from skimming the chapter titles and whatnot. Really, we had no idea what we were getting into. Thus, there was no desire other than our own at work. The concept of pretending to like something you do not like--a concept, Pat, which you must know well, as displayed by your superhuman ability to detect it in others--was simply something that never entered into the equation. Even today, such illogical modes of thinking remain unknown to me.

But I guess that doesn't fully address your comment. To clue you in: my friend and I finished the book (granted, once we hit that black hole chapter it started getting rougher---but, hey, we had some cool conversatiosn abotu quarks, IIRC)--the teacher did not. Hm.

>>
"Most of the Julie-Schwartz edited DC comics of the Silver Age. Russ Manning's Magnus. Hal
Foster's Prince Valiant on the strip side, along with both Caniff's and Wunder's Terry and the Pirates.
Sugar and Spike. Spider-Man up until Stan Lee stopped writing it. Challengers of the Unknown for the
first 25 issues or so."

Is there any comic that you consider a superlative work that compares favorably to works in other
media? Or, do you think the above is the best that comics can do?<<

I don't make comparisons between works in different media. Such comparisons are simply impossible, because each medium works in its own way. One cannot say, for instance, that Citizen Kane is a superior or inferior work to Great Expectations, because the esthetic judgments required for a film and a novel are vastly different. You might as well try to compare Kristi Yamaguchi and Steffi Graf as athletes; each is superlative at her sport, but the requirements for each are so different as to make comparisons ludicrous.

Best, Pat