some-triangles:

Today’s webcomic recommendation is “the property of hate”, which is by the person who does those Gladstone Gander fancomics you may have seen scooting around tumblr, if you’re in any way duck-adjacent.   It’s parked about midway between Sandman and Pixar – or maybe the Phantom Tollbooth would be a better referent?   Let’s go with that.   Regardless, it’s good clean fun, if not the most subtle/original thing I’ve ever read, and I suspect it’s going to culminate in the protagonists murdering the author, which is something I always enjoy.

I think the thing I find the most interesting about it is the way it personifies television – I’m used to seeing it cast as a villain in stories which acknowledge it at all, and this one does acknowledge that it’s a monster, but it’s a useful monster, a well-intentioned one.  This feels like a more honest way of talking about it in for people of my age, for whom even our most transgressive dreams generally arrived via the tube.  Crow Cillers is in part about the struggle to acknowledge the formative influence that TV had on the most important parts of ourselves while still acknowledging its meanness and venality, and I suspect that’s where Property of Hate is going as well, albeit in a significantly more G-rated fashion.  It ties those themes in with identity and sacrifice, focusing on ideas about giving up bits of yourself to keep going.  Solid stuff.

I suspect that this is journeyman work and the next thing the author does will be the one everybody’ll notice (as tends to be the case for stories about the creative process) but might as well get on board here, and read the duck comics while you’re at it, for all your duck needs.