Maturity Is Only A Short Break In

Maturity Is Only A Short Break In Adolescence.

There's No Rap Against Comics That Isn't True. They Were Sexist, They Were Racist, You Name It - And They Kind Of Gloried In That.

In The Depression, Besides Everybody Being Poor, Our Entertainment Was Much More Primitive And Innocent. The Comic Strip, Which I So Venerated, Was Still A Very New Form. Movies Had Just Become Talkies. Radio Had Just Gone Coast To Coast For The First Time. Network Radio Had Just Begun When I Was A Kid. So All Of These Forms Were More Or Less In Their Infancy, And Feeling Their Oats. Comics Were Fresh And Funny And Nervy, And In A Sense, Defiant Of The Prevailing Culture.

The Weekly Cartoons, As Were My Plays, Came From A Sense Of Criticism, Criticism Of The Times, Critical Of The Culture, Of Our Manners And Attitudes Towards Each Other. The Children's Books Come From The Reverse. They're More Supportive, Since We're Living In A Time Where We Talk More About Kids And Do Less, We Talk About Balancing The Budget And We Do It By Cutting Education.

Whether These Were Liberal Publications Or Conservative Publications, Whether They Were Mainstream Or Slightly To The Side Of The Mainstream; Out Of The Mainstream, They All Believed That They Had The Right To Tell You How To Stylize Yourself. And From The New York Times To The Much More Left-winged Nation. And The Voice Said, No, Whatever You Want To. You Drew Whatever You Want To, We'll Publish It. Nobody Was Doing That. Nobody Does It Today. The Voice Is No Longer That Paper, And Editorializing Is Now In The Hands Of Editors, With Few Exceptions.