It is TRUE, as god is my witness. Time magazine said so.. Writes National Book Award winner Oates:
When I first began reading this inspired comic book, I was quite a young child, entirely lacking in awareness of or interest in who might have been responsible for its freshness and originality amid so much on comic-book racks that was derivative and cliché-ridden. Now I know that Harvey Kurtzman edited Mad magazine and William Gaines published it; that Mad belonged to a controversial family of comic books, EC Comics, one day to be investigated by a Senate committee (on what grounds, one can only speculate); that the fatuously grinning Alfred E. Neuman with his perennial query (“What, me worry?”) prefigured the improbable presidential cartoon character George W. Bush many years later.
Wow that is kind of odd. But it does partially explain how one of her stories was adapted in “Sexy Chix”
I have a few of her gothics around the house – Bellefleur is one – but alas have not yet gotten around to reading longform JCO. Any other reccomendations?
I was more pleased to see (in that same TIME article) that Janet Evanovich is really loving Buffy Season 8 from Dark Horse, especially as Evanovich is actually a good writer. (Not much of an Oates fan. You’d think if she read all those MADs, her prose might have a touch of humor somewhere.)