Stuff people said: Part XIV

Memín Pinguín is a comic-book series about a noble negrito who unfortunately looks like a gorilla; Tijuana bibles–cheap, pre-television-era porno comics skewering celebrities–had nothing to do with Mexico except acting as an easy repository for perverted American fantasies. “How perfect, expected and fortuitous (not to mention profitable) that ‘Tijuana Bible’ evolved as the go-to moniker for pornographic mod-texts,” says Dr. William Nericcio, the muy loco, muy smart head of the English department at San Diego State University who blogs at textmex.blogspot.com. “Not that you need catchy names to move porn, but anything sexual with the name ‘Tijuana’ attached to it assured that the consumer would be confronted with some beastly, swarthy, over-the-top sexual witnessing that would leave them ready to empty their gonadic ‘profits’ onto sheets, tissues, sheep or worse!”

Well, let’s back up and say that, as far as I know, assistant editors at comic book companies do not get paid tons and tons of money. There still is that “I’m partially doing it for the love” factor. Some people from other fields such as marketing, finance, etc ask me about becoming an assistant editor. I say: probably not. Enter into the company as a marketing specialist, administrative assistant, etc, and, if you wish, make a lateral move into editorial at some point. That’s what I did, and my salary was slightly higher because of it; I made a lateral move from the creative services department — that paid more — to editorial as an assistant.

I would want to hug the person that bought this comic because it resonated with them. I would like to make them a sandwich and spend the afternoon watching local wrestling on TV with them and loan them my record albums. Reading Runes of Rangan is like watching someone make a movie with an oiled-up weightlifter that can barely move or hold a sword after years of viewing the best fight films from Hong Kong. It’s watching a kid drop a Boston album onto a turntable in the middle of a party whose soundtrack is a mix of eclectic music culled from someone’s iPod. Its naked yearning for a kind of heroic overlay on life where everything looks awesome for a few seconds, and you can fight in a really effective way and you walk through tough guys like water and your life has mythic resonance and the most beautiful, incredible girl in the world is pledged to your heart, all says something to me that a lot of better art cannot. It makes me want to cry, this ugly but beautiful black velvet painting of a funnybook.