The Future is NOW!

I recently went back to look at a comic I did in the year 2000, before cell phones and the internet were one, and these devices were not ever present in our lives.  And there was no "social media" yet. There are no original ideas in this comic, it's not that good. What strikes me, however,  is how benign I thought the portable internet would be, and how much worse it really is now.  There's no prediction of how we're being spied on, or marketed to or stolen from.

Recently I redid this comic to bring it up to date.  Maybe I'll update it again in another 10 years and it'll download directly  into your brains.

Hogarth Crumb Art Time Loop

Tim and I  went to The Met to see Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine.  I loved looking at all the drawings of  people with bug bodies. I saw a defecating bottom wearing glasses and learned that is was a symbol of ignorance. Look at this  Daumier!  And this Hirschfeld and this Rowlandson... reminds me of James Ensor!  And check out the show... it's ending March 4th. Tim and I found ourselves in front of Hogarth's Characters and Caricaturas...

The first thing that I thought when I saw Hogarth's hatchy and wobbly but assuredly lithe line was how much he's influenced Crumb.  It is as if Hogarth is still breathing through Crumb's drawings.  Then Tim looked at the bottom of the print and said, "That guy is right out of the '60's" and it's true, Hogarth does seem to have drawn a belligerent hippie in the bottom right hand corner of the page. I stood there transfixed.  Was Hogarth sending a secret message to Crumb in the future?  Or maybe Crumb traveled back 200 years and made a cameo in Hogarth's picture? Hmmm....