Welcome to the New World review.
Interesting New World we live in. The Pulitzer Prizes were announced just a few days were just announced at the time of me writing this. I'd like to say to the Pulitzer committee, once again you chose not to honor me. It's okay. I'm not upset. I know you're just I know all of you are just jealous of me anyways. I guess their were good picks. One of the most interesting picks was the Pulitzer for cartooning, which was it's really the first of this sort of thing. It's a 20 part graphical story, or cartoon, I read it, and I liked it a lot. I want to write about it.
The story is about two families of Syrian refugees, woo political, and it follows their tribulations as they come to America and settle and go through their lives. I found it to be a small, quite touching story about people. It felt real and sweet to me in a way that I hadn't really experienced, you know? I know for a fact that ... This one thing that everybody talks about, the thing is that it's based on real people that the author was in contact with. It's just their names were changed, but I guess just the names were changed. I guess one of the criticisms that erupted from this is it's not really cartooning, it's non-fiction reporting, which Art Spiegelman, who was very enthusiastic about this book, and when Art Spiegelman talks about issues, about graphic novels you listen to Art Spiegelman because Art Spiegelman is the master of all this stuff.
He argued that that's an emerging thing. I totally agree with that. I mean, a secret [inaudible 00:03:15] that's actually ... it's actually a very old form that's just regained popularity. It regained popularity. That's a funny thing, these old things that have been there forever regaining popularity with people, and old ideas that have regained popularity or some [inaudible 00:03:57] like graphic non-fiction work becoming more and more popular. Others are not as good, like say the retrograde ideals that this comic is secretly about. One of the criticisms that I heard about this thing was that ... it's not overtly political. Cartooning should go to the overtly political. It only tangentially mentions Trump. Well, smartypants guy who said that in that Washington Post article I read about this. Let's explain this. Let's explain one of the basic concepts that we found in history and art and all this stuff, and partly why representation is important and this ideal.
Okay. What if I told you this is a story about two brothers who want to have a better life for them and their families, work hard in new places, try and keep their old ways going as they embrace new ... try and keep their old traditions going while embracing their new freedoms. It's also about kids learning to fit in with a new thing, the fear of learning how to swim, all that beautiful stuff, you know? That's relatable, right? That's perfectly human. That's human and relatable and lovely, but that's a universal concept. They're Syrian refugees. Geez. Somebody reading this might think to themselves, "Oh, they're human beings just like me. We go through similar ideas. Oh." That's political. That's making a political statement. That's making a political statement without Doing obvious lame things. Not lame, but obvious things. That works better than ... Really, cartoonists of the world, make another 100 jokes about Trump's hair. It's not old at this point, you know?
(man Trump's hair, it looks like what happens when looks less like hair and more like what would happen if say his hair fell into that chemical vat that the Joker did.) I'm not saying don't make fun of Trump. By all means, make fun of him. He deserves every instance of it. I guess just be more original, America. Think you can do that? Anyways, back to the review. It really, really quite anyways. You think you can do that, be original, like this quite charming comic book right here? It follows their day to day lives. into America, there's a particularly fun scene where the kids go to a Jewish camp, one of the girls learns how to swim. It goes into history of other refugees as we learn about as they get help from a Vietnamese refugee. It's just a great story. It's a day by day you know, life and stuff I love. Essentially humanist story. That's the important part. The human being is the important part in all of this.
The art is great. It's that shaded blue thing that's quite popular I know with more modern cartooning, with a little bit more of a down beat edge, which is interesting. It's slightly melancholy, but expressive. It's it's full of life. This was something I was really happy I read. In context, the Pulitzer that it won is really amazing. If traditional cartooning, just the one square, where this is like essentially a comic book on the web. Is there a term for that? Like comic on the web? Website that contains comic book? Web comic? Web comic. That's a thing I haven't heard discussed about this at all. It was a comic that premiered on the web. They're gonna publish it later, but it's a web comic. Does this qualify as a web comic? Hmm. I mean, did a web comic just when the Pulitzer Prize? I don't know. How could a web comic win the Pulitzer Prize? I mean, as we all know web comics are only two guys on a couch talking about video games. It's certainly not a varied and interesting field that is very deserving it. Huh.
Well, I can't just say definitively, I guess, and we'll just have to leave it at that, that inkling of a thought in your brain mind right there. Let it flower. Sincerely, read this. It only takes a few minutes. You'll be glad you did. You'll be part of the conversation of the Pulitzer Prize. You can go up to somebody and say, "Oh, did you read the latest Pulitzer Prize winning thing? I did." Do it. You'll feel good about yourself.