Oh, I know you're all long gone

I mean, I haven't posted here for months. But still...

I haven't read many comics. You should try it for a few months. It's good therapy.

But, like a Austin Metros pouring off a 1970's British Leyland conveyor belt, comics have continued to arrive every month, and are now sitting in a huge pile in my spare room.

You know what? They're stunning. The modern American comic is gorgeous. Thick and glossy and lustrous. I'd willingly stick my right hand in a mincer if my left could draw with a tenth of the mastery of Finch or Mack. These artists are geniuses. If reputation had any relationship to talent, their statues would tower over major thoroughfares. We should talk about them in daunted, reverential tones, and when they died, massed ranks of soldiery would fire volleys as horsedrawn carriages took them past distraught crowds to their cathedral resting places.

Instead they're the obscure talents of a geek pastime regularly traduced by ignoramus herds. Not fair. Not fair at all.

I can't make an economic case for the continued existence of comics. They shouldn't even be viable any more and, chances are, soon enough they won't be. But what a magnificent folly they are.