My usual greeting, yes, but this month it has more meaning than most. Any writer, or entertainer, or public figure, or shut-in cartoonist with delusions of grandeur and a tenuous grip on sanity and ego, tends to fall in love with their audience. There is no greater drug than a captive reader, no greater addiction than that of addicting another soul to your thought and action and creation. This love is a parental a love, an authoritarian love. The parent creator feels a concern for their consuming children, their 'kids'.
In the case of 'Goats', this concern is not unwarranted. Why, you ask? Because you folks, I am discovering, are a bunch of fucked-up psychotics.
After having been stalked by a rabid reader last month, after having had my home penetrated like some tender orifice by the phallus of fandom, I thought I had seen the worst of the darkness that could invade a man's heart. I was wrong.
The letters came pouring in this month. I have grown used to certain types of email, certain subjects which seem to fascinate the juvenile minds of the readers of this feature. Along with the usual requests for lesbian characters and vegisexual come-ons, however, was a disturbing trend.
It seems that a large percentage of the readers of 'Goats' think that what goes on in the comic strip is some sort of accurate representation of what my life is like. You may recall a certain series of strips this month that featured a depressed and bitter Jon, desperately yearning for a sense of purpose, a direction, a piece of ass. Not long after I had posted the first strip in the series, a flood of concerned email filled my Inbox. People were offering their condolences, telling me to 'lighten up', keep my spirits high and my sails unfurled, all sorts of sentimental gunk.
I used to laugh at those who said that too much television was dangerous, that children growing up with their faces glued to the tube would be unable to differentiate between real life and the dancing images before them. I was mistaken. It is clear to me now that I live amidst a generation of people who identify more strongly with poorly-drawn wide-eyed alcoholic cartoon characters than they do with the actual people they meet in actual life.
I must admit, although from a personal viewpoint this strokes my ego like a cheerleader strokes a chinchilla, it is a sad, sad commentary on either 1) people's ability to relate to real life or 2) how truly boring real people have become.
I'd like to add that although I denied the accusations that it was indeed my own depression being mirrored in Jon's actions, my denials went unheard and unbelieved. "Are we to suppose you are not a cynical but sensitive New Yorker with bouts of melancholy?" people wrote. Still others wrote, "I'll give you some real balls you can suck on! Bitch!!" The readers had spoken: I was Jon, and Jon was me. Or, at least, they so wanted this to be true, that it became true for them.
Consider this bleak view of the future: each of you has a responsibility to stop being so goddamn boring, or we all face the slow, inevitable replacement of our friends and family by cartoon characters. You have been warned.
-jonathan rosenberg, cartoonist extraordinaire
march 02, 1998