At intervals, writers with nothing better to do and a copious supply of unclear words attempt to prove violent video games have nothing but beneficial effects upon the children who are addicted to them. These pompous personages are either idiots or rascals. I know because, as a small boy, I was addicted to the funny papers, the distant ancestors of today's digital entertainments. I was like a sponge soaking up everything, good, bad and ridiculous.
When the Great Depression laid its blight upon the world, I was two years old. Two years later I heard and understood words read by others. Mostly, those who read to me were engaged in saving me from the commission of crimes I could neither understand nor pronounce by regaling me with huge numbers of Bible stories. At the age of four, I puzzled over the story of Samson and Delilah, but knew nothing of the larger world, not even of the drought-parched plain that surrounded the village. Then I discovered the funnies.
All through the Lost Decade there was enough money in the weekly budget to purchase the Saturday edition of a city newspaper. At the age of five, I was entrusted every Saturday with a thin dime, the price of a bringing home a Chicago Tribune from the local drug store. All I could do was look at pictures. When I prevailed upon my big brother to read me the words, I absorbed the stories of Borley Rectory, the most haunted house in England and of Chicago's gory St. Valentine's Day Massacre. I was astounded by the mysteries and murders that abounded beyond the confines of my peaceful village. Then I turned to the funnies and tried to understand them without the help of any big person. By the time I reached Grade 4, I could do it.
There was a comic strip called Bringing Up Father, which had been around since 1913. I learned its humour was based on the ways in which wealthy Mr. Jiggs frustrated every effort of his social-climbing wife , Maggie, to distance her family from Jiggs' humble beginnings.
I met Dagwood and Blondie, whose comic strip wedding took place in 1930. They are still featured in newspapers in 2014 and, although over a century old, are as youthful as ever. The strip, then and now, was gently humorous and without significant social commentary.
I liked the KatzenjammerKids, who first appeared in 1897. They undermined the authority of Big People with a succession of fiendish tricks. I wished I could let them loose in a Horatio Alger book. (Alger books were read to me whether I wanted to hear them or not.) Invariably, Alger heroes were poor young men who became wealthy through marathon church going and obedient service to a rich tycoon, even to the extremity of marrying the tycoon's homely daughter. I didn't think this was a happy ending for any story. By this time, my supplier of comics had been changed to the Toronto Star and I was beginning to have strange feelings when I saw all the curvaceous young women in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, a space epic first drawn in 1928.
There was Flash Gordon, another space fantasy that dated from 1934. There were some evil females in this one too, but they were decorative. Rogers was at war with the Red Mongols and Gordon was the enemy of Ming, the sinister ruler of the planet Mongo. Both strips denigrated Asians. They recalled a time when newspapers were filled with stories of the Yellow Peril. I didn't approve. The Chinese people I knew lived at the Canada Café and were always friendly and kind.
The best of all comic strips appeared in 1934. It was Al Capp's Li'l Abner. Capp was a genius. His cast of characters, human and non-human, were always funny and always instructive. I didn't realize at the time I was looking at some of the most remarkable satire ever invented.
Satire, poetry and music are all elements in protest movements. What I began to learn from Al Capp became a part of my understanding of the thousands of marchers at Selma, Ala., singing We Shall Overcome.
When I was little, Big People were sometimes puzzled by my strange opinions. I always replied, "I saw it in the funny papers." Years later, I know having a free and independent opinion is a priceless gift. Try to learn what is true and try to do what is good. That's what I learned from the funny papers. And, incidentally, don't waste time playing video games.
