Funny and Comic

When I was a kid, very poor, I had no money to buy comics but I would just sit around and surreptitiously read them in the store.  Maybe that is why I read very, very fast -- I'm still afraid that I'll get caught.

Why were they called "comics"?  Even then, almost nothing that I read was funny.  I was mostly into Superman, Supergirl, Spiderman, and all the good stuff.  My Spokane Indian friend, Margie, got me into horror comics -- she loaned them to me to read at lunchtime.

The first really funny comics I ever read were Doonesbury and Calvin and Hobbes.

But more than the three S's, those two "comics" were wise and deep comments on actual life.  So when I first read Maus, then Pedro and Me, then Persepolis, I wasn't that shocked to see actual content.  Even more, they forced me to think.  For example, Art Spiegelman forced me to try to figure out his allegory.  Judd Winick forced me to take reality tv seriously.  What does Marjane Satrapi do?

Why "Fast Fish and Loose Fish"?

The word "fast" in Moby-Dick means that a whale has been captured, while for Melville the word "loose" implies that the whale is still free.   Moby-Dick himself was the biggest loose fish, still loose at the end of the novel.

Then, Melville expands to politics -- which countries in 1851 were fast fish and which ones were loose fish?  Imperialism and colonization were huge issues for him.

 Melville writes:
"What was America in 1492 but a loose-fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish. 



What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? 

What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?"

How does this connect to the memoir Persepolis?   It is the story of Marjane Satrapi's external and internal struggle to decide in what ways she is willing to be a fast fish -- connected to her family and to her religion but struggling always to be loose.  She needs to create her own version of God, her own tastes in music, her own fashion, and her own political beliefs.  "And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?"