Metapost: O Canada (or a big “thank you” to the True North)
Just for fun, I looked up my site over at alexa.com. Apparently, 39% of you readers, the highest percentage by nationality, are from Canada (vs. only 25% American … Yankee scum!) This is actually pretty unique. I poked around the other webcomic-related sites, and most had a solidly American majority. I don’t know why this is. I’m American, though I’ve pretty much spent all my life in cities not two hours from the Canadian border.
But I think it’s pretty fantastic!
Thank you, my Canadian brethren!
In return, I have to say that hockey is the manliest of sports, Tim Horton’s is the tastiest of fast food breakfasts, Blackberrys are awesome, and Bret Hart was the greatest wrestler of all time.
This guy's not far behind.
And a big hello to the apparently 21% of you from India. You’re only 4% away from surpassing the Americans! Don’t force me to put a bunch of Aishwarya Rai pictures up on this site. I’ll do it.
Finally, all rise for the Canadian National Anthem.
Posted on July 8, 2009, in metapost, The Webcomic Overlook and tagged Canada, Canada rocks, Canadians, Canadians are cool, Don't mess with Canada. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
As one of those Canadians, I say hello, eh? I couldn’t say why you get so many Canadians reading your site; maybe it’s just a temporary Kate Beaton effect, and you just need to talk about Americans for them to pay attention.
As for that national anthem link, isn’t it sad that our own government didn’t even bother to put out a version with a genuine orchestra and a choir, instead of blatantly using some musical software to record it?
I was thinking it might be the Kate Beaton effect. I got mentioned in MacLean’s for a Kate Beaton article; best case scenario, it managed to publicize this site to Canadian readers. (Worst case scenario: if Bleedman fans turn out to be overwhelmingly Canadian —- my reviews for his two comics are the two most read reviews on the site.)
Most of these comics I review have American creators, but the comic themselves don’t ever seem to be “American,” per se. It’s all video games, video games, video games! That might actually be a correct reflection of American culture as it currently stands, but it certainly makes us look quite the rubes compared to Ms. Beaton’s smart comics.
(Also, with the online version of the national anthem, clearly your government is admirably frugal! All that matters is the tune: it’s quite catchy, and when I hum it at home, my wife yells at me because it gets stuck in her head all day. 🙂 )
I doubt very much that Mr. Bleedman’s admirers come mostly from Canada, so I will have to be satisfied with the Kate Beaton explanation — although I’m quite surprised that she gets such a following. Sure, I’ve heard of her before reading about her here, but as I am just a casual observer of the webcomic scene, it’s difficult for me to gauge how much of a following such creators get.
On the American comic scene, what I despise about those video game comics is not so much that they are not meant to last, or that they will sink into obscurity once their run ends, but that they reduce the entire field to an endless series of topical jokes then heralded as a gold standard, almost a step down from the newspaper comic page. I would love to see which webcomic you would recommend as the quintessential American webcomic. (I would have thought of PBF, but it moved into rather unsettling territory by the end.)
By the way, I remember seeing an online poll where the Canadian anthem was proclaimed one of the worst national anthems, along with the Australian (both of which are rather good), while the British lost almost all its points on subject matter (“okay, we know you’re a monarchy; what else?”) and originality (Liechtenstein is using the same melody). The arguments against the US anthem are the usual ones, that it’s impossible to sing. And I remember an interesting argument, can’t remember where I read it, that the most totalitarian a country’s regime, the better the anthem; guess I’ll stick with a bad one, then.
The nifty thing about Ms. Beaton is that lately she’s being raved about in non-webcomic circles. I’ve been to several sites where they don’t talk about webcomics normally, but lo and behold there is a link to the Hark! A Vagrant! LiveJournal.
PBF stuck me as kinda British/European. I guess it’s sorta the painterly style, which I always associate with works like 2000 AD and Tank Girl. If I were to think of comic strips that, to me, felt quintessentially American, I’d go with old standbys like Pogo, Peanuts, and Calvin & Hobbes. Those are more reflective of a by-gone era (where kids actually went outside to play baseball and what not).
I’m not sure what would constitute a uniquely “American” comic these days, but I’d love to find out. Frankly, having traveled 35 out of the 50 states so far, I can say that it’s pretty fascinating how everyone in our country has their own unique regional culture. Utah is like a whole other country from Washington, Virginia is like a whole other country from Michigan, Texas is a friggin’ subcontinent, and so on. And it’s weird that Neil Gaiman, arriving from Great Britain, is one of the few writers I’ve encountered who has fallen in love with the diversity so much that he wrote a book about it (American Gods). I’d like to imagine that if some comic creator managed to see and celebrate the nuances of culture in a similar fashion (the same way Ms. Beaton celebrates her Maritime heritage), then we’d have the American webcomic.
My favorite anecdote about the US National Anthem comes from Isaac Asimov. He decided to sing all four verses at a party he was at (the kitchen staff closed the doors because they didn’t want to hear it). And Mr. Asimov brought the house down. It taught me a lesson: the first verse is only part one of the story, and if you stop there you’re basically just telling tale of a dude who’s stuck in jail.
Just so you know: There’s always a good reason to put up a picture of Aishwarya Rai.
True that. I’m planning on mentioning Ms. Rai randomly in future articles as an excuse to put up pictures whenever I can. :p