“W.A. Silver” started this one centered on the lies society tells us, from a very early age until right before you kick the bucket. Half of these seem to be aimed at keeping you striving and working, not knowing how hard the game is rigged against you. Another half seems concerned with keeping you with questioning authority, theirs and doubting capability to change things, yours. The last half just seems geared to making you as miserable and angry as possible, while directing that anger at each other (women vs. men, black vs. white, “legal” vs.  “illegal”). I mean, the only reason I think people rag on masturbation is to keep people miserable, pent up and hating themselves. This works well for religions which get to tell you your bad for following natural urges and then provide salvation in return for slavish devotion to a retrograde agenda… Religion is a pretty outdated concept (but that’s a subject for another mini!) The list could go on, this minicomic doesn’t even nearly come close to covering it all, but we got some yuks in and there’s no saying we won’t revisit the “issue” in the future. “W.A. Silver” really should have been the one to explain it… but here’s Mikey with his parallel take on it.

Mikey: I think the title page he did says it all.  Society all makes you think someday you can be a millionaire.  In fact, that’s one of the tools it uses to keep all the working stiffs in place.  That is, the idea that you can be one of the rich people if you play their game.  But that’s just for starters.  The idea was to examine the tapestry of different lies we call society.   I only have one panel in this book: the one with the kid with the propeller beanie.  My idea was that the lie was twofold: 99.999etc.% of the time if you tell a little kid he can grow up to be president, you’re lying to him.  And then there’s the lie that being president is the apex of achievement(in the U.S.), that it’s the highest you can reach, when in reality presidents don’t have that much control and tend to be forced to do what a bunch of corporations want them to do.  When was the last president that was a good person that really helped society?  No doubt some tough choices have to be made, but when were they made with the well being of the majority in mind?  Nowadays presidents’ hands are tied, or they’re corrupted by the office they hold, or they don’t represent the interests of the people, have anything in common with them, or care.  Sorry, that was a bit of a rant.  Just fleshing out the lies within lies a bit.  You get the idea.

Oh yeah, “W.A. Silver” drew the 1st and 4th pages, Audrey drew the 2nd, Mike drew the 3rd, Justin drew the 5th and 7th pages, “Kate Silver” drew the 6th and Rio drew the 8th.