Already some things are changing:

When I started writing about comics, before I ever began to write comics, I wanted a world in which comics would simply be regarded as a medium like any other, and in which we were accorded the same respect that any other medium was given. The amount of respect that novels and films and great works of art got. I wanted us to get literary awards. I wanted comics to turn up on the shelves of bookshops, and to sit next to books on the bestseller lists. Maybe one day a comic could come out and be on the NYT bestseller list.

We’ve got all that. And I don’t think it’s important after all.

Right now I actually believe that the best thing about comics may well be that it is a gutter medium. We do not know which fork to use, and we eat with our fingers. We are creators of a medium, we create art in an art form, which is still alive, which is powerful, which can do things no other medium can do.

I don’t believe that a fraction of the things that can be done with comics have yet been done.

For now, I think we’ve barely scratched the surface.

And I think that’s exciting. I don’t know where comics as a medium will go in the future. But I want to be amazed, and I’m pretty sure that I shall be.

And I trust that one day when you, whatever age, race, gender, or ethnicity you may lay claim to, are in your turn a cranky old Jew up here giving a speech, that will always remain true.

Keynote Speech for the 2004 Harvey Awards.

The Best American Comics, 2010

Page 1 panel 1

Space. The infinite vastness of everything. Seeing that’s a bit hard to fit into one panel, you’ll probably have to suggest it. I mean, if you can fit the whole universe in, then go for it. Otherwise, a galaxy.

NO DIALOGUE

Page 1 panel 2

The Earth, as seen from space. I think this would best be representational, rather than hyperrealistic. (Would we even recognize a realistic Earth, as seen from space?) North should be up, and North America should be easy to find.

NO DIALOGUE

Page 1 panel 3

A bigger panel. It’s America, the country, as seen from space, with bits of Canada at the top and Mexico at the bottom. All of it. Feel free to add labels to it. Amber waves of grain can be labeled “amber waves of grain.” Purple mountains majesty ditto. Also skyscrapers of Manhattan, alligators of Florida, the cable cars of San Francisco, and ever-so-slightly to the right of Minneapolis is the end of a tip of an arrow. It is labeled.

ARROW LABEL: Your Editor.

Page 1 panel 4

And this, from above, looking up at the world, is the editor of this volume. He is nearly fifty. He needs a haircut, has bags under the eyes, is wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. He has the little potbelly of a man who has spent too much of his life behind a desk and the haunted expression of a man one missed deadline away from disaster. His hands are in his jacket pockets, looking up toward our virtual camera, that has been zooming in on him. He’s talking to us: