Douglas Barbour wrote:

> The notes already rock, Ken, but yeah, could perhaps be pushed
> further. It's the Spiegelman of In the Shadow of No Towers that you
> should check out, though, I think. Katsenjammers appear there....
>
> Doug

The very one. I knew about Spiegelman as long ago as 1986 when I bought
the first _Maus_. Then the second. Then watched with interest as he
worked his way into the front ranks of American magazine illustrators.
How many New Yorker covers in which he did not sell out for commercial
appeal? When _Two Towers_ appeared I grabbed it. A horror which at the
time lost me--the book seems to be a retrospective of ever strip since
_The Yellow Kid_ through _Krazy Kat_ and onward. I recall now that the
K. Kidz got in there. Classic comic strips. I'm not even interested so
much in Why he used them in a book about 9/11 as in what pushed me from
behind to try to analogize the Kolumbine Kidz with the Katzenjammers.
Well...maybe. The strain of mischief gone viral? Ignatz Mouse creaming
Offisa Pup INSTEAD of Krazy Kat with a brick? The 98-pound-weakling on
the beach in all those comic book Charles Atlas ads for physical
fitness, turning on his tormentor not with swollen muscles but with an
assault rifle...screw fighting fair, just retaliate? In that case a 2x4
with a nail in the end would have saved the weaking a lot of money spent
on "dynamic tension" strength exercises. Klebold and Harris didn't
become physically imposing, they acquired "equalizers." Somehow all
this is right underneath the surface of a culture that teaches not to
get even but to annihilate your supposed opponent.

I think someone (here?) pointed out that Klebold and Harris, whose
torments came from high school jocks and bullies, took their revenge not
on those same people but on classmates who were just minding their own
business. There's no "right" here but there was wrong followed by
horrifically wrong. In that sense they went from Webster to some
real-life version of the Tasmanian Devil or Bugs Bunny. "Wrong from the
start."

I expect to have lots of long-term fun with this. Revenge is sweet when
you can write about someone else's.

Ken

--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
            Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
            Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
W.H. Auden