[[Two women are in a room. One is seated with a book, but has lifted her eyes from the page to begin her monologue. The other listens from behind her, concerned]]
Reader: There must be some books that never get read, not even once. They're printed and bound and shipped to stores...Then remaindered and destroyed, or maybe bought and then sat on a shelf forever and ever.
Reader: Nobody learned anything from them. Nobody was taken on a journey of imagination by the carefully-chosen sequences of words they contained. Every day on the shelf, another hope dashed. Bought! Then re-sold to a used bookstore: more hope, fading but still flickering..until the fateful day of the trash compactor.
Listener: Maybe it's good that some of those books are never read. What about a hate book? A racist book. Page after page of the most vile, ignorant tripe ever set to print. Some odious, illiterate screed set in 12-point Times New Roman because that was the default in Word.
Listener: And it's not like it's the book's fault. The book was just paper, all bright-eyed and eager, showing up at the plant excited for its big day, its destiny...
Reader: Great now I feel bad for a racist book
{{header: hope for that WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: 'Cooking for Racists: 88 Bleached-Flour Recipes To Bolster the Caucasiarchy'}}
'Cooking for Racists: 88 Bleached-Flour Recipes To Bolster the Caucasiarchy'
The computers tell me it was 20 years ago, June 9, 2006, that I arrived in New York for my first-ever comic convention as an exhibitor, MoCCA.
It was an important trip for me, a milestone in what would go on to become my career.
I wrote a little reminiscence on Patreon (free/unlocked) — including a first-since-then reprint of the photocomics I made at the time, documenting the trip!
Read the rest here: [ 20 Years Ago (In Photocomic Form) ]
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