This is, of course, the first step in my plan to dominate and rule over the comics industry like a beerthirsty russian czar. Soon, billions of unsuspecting readers will open their favorite newspapers (or log on to their favorite news provider), expecting to find old family favorites like "Family Circus" or "Beetle Bailey". Little do they know that we will have made beef jerky out of little Bobby and the Sarge. The Era of Goats is rapidly approaching. Ready your wallets.
I don't plan on stopping at the comics page, either. As you must know, comics are the best way to influence the thoughts and actions of the Ordinary Man. I'm sure a lot of you enjoy reading 'Dilbert'. I do also. And I'm sure you've thought to yourself, "Gee, this is just what life is like at my office." I have also. That is, until I started receiving letters from dozens of readers, saying things like "Oh, dOOd, your coMicz ruLez! My life is exactly like your strip!" Now, I highly doubt that any one of my readers hangs out with a satanic chicken or a womanizing goat, or has been kidnapped by aliens, or goes on dates. So I've come to realize that people don't identify with comic strips, per se, as much as the comic strips brainwash them and tell them what to think.
Wielding this little piece of information, I plan to march out over the comic strip landscape and crush anyone standing in my way, with an army of unthinking readers behind me (no doubt shouting things like "Kewl!" as we stab and sever the limbs of those brats from Family Circus, watching their little bodies desiccate as the blood spreads across the cartoon wasteland). With a mere suggestion within one of a strip's panels, i will make hundreds of thousands of people wait in line to purchase "Goats: The Soundtrack" or tickets to "Goats: The Movie", wear "Goats: The Apparel", or sit through rehashed 'Friends' plots as they watch "Goats: The Sitcom".
Now, I'd like to say that my ultimate goal is to bring quality entertainment to the comedy-starved masses, people who seem to think that "Suddenly Susan" is the pinnacle of our society's achievements. I'd like to say that I'm doing it to bring smiles to people's faces, or to fulfill my own creative desires.
I'm not. I'm doing it to fill my pockets with cash, to make billions in a new media empire where i need spend but an hour a day doodling bad art onto a little piece of paper.
Send your checks and money orders now before postal rates go up.
-jonathan rosenberg, cartoonist extraordinaire
october 1, 1997