I dislike modern art. I'm lumping together all those precursors and offshoots after Impressionism—Dadaism, Cubism, Futurism, even postmodernism (1). Yet one of my favorite bookmarks, which I just used today, out-moderns modern art. It's a sheet of white notebook paper, folded in four, with multicolored hairballs of scribbles. Orange, blue, brown, red, and black lines spiral and zig-zag at random, with no symmetry or color coordination. I found it in a used book I bought through Amazon.com. I imagine it was drawn by a child just old enough to hold a crayon.

Most modern art is supposed to express a theory, such as the idea that surreal visions seen in dreams present pure art untainted by reason, or the idea that only pure platonic shapes could capture “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling” (2). This piece of notebook paper tells a story. It tells me about a small child just discovering that he or she can change the world and make beautiful bright colors appear on a blank surface. This is a more meaningful and more accessible story to me than whatever it was Matisse was trying to say with his poorly-drawn nudes.

Any time an author tries sincerely to express something that moved him/her, that story will at least tell a story about that author: How he/she thinks, what is important to him/her. Maybe not a story engaging enough to keep reading, but something that puts me inside someone else's head.

The flip side is that I can dislike even things that are expertly written if they tell a story of an author whose head is a nasty place to be (Frank Miller), or who has stopped growing (Hemingway). Same goes for the audience. Badly-written Halo crossovers in the featured box don't annoy me because they're badly written. They annoy me because seeing them in the box puts me in touch with the thousands of readers who put them there, and it's a bad touch. I don't want to believe that I've joined that herd.

Hence my mixed feelings on learning last week that Axe Cop will be the first web comic to be turned into a television show.

Web comics are the "amateurs", while print comics & graphic novels are the "professionals", yet all the good new comics in this century have been web comics. If I listed my top favorite 100 comics or graphic novels that have come out since Sandman ended, it would be Bone, The Eternal Smile, and 98 web comics. There's a rich lode of wonderful imaginary worlds for television producers to mine. They chose Axe Cop.

Axe Cop charmed me, briefly, when it came out. But — and I hope no one shows this to its author, bless his heart — in an absolute sense, it's one of the worst web comics ever made. It reads like it was written by a five-year-old. It's a long rambling narrative, the type that little kids tell each other on campouts (or that sometimes appears in the featured box) where one crazy thing happens after another, with dragons, monsters, and people with super-powers all fighting each other. It's like Adventure Time without the humor or character.

That's because it is written by five-year-old.  His father is an artist and does the drawing. It was cute when I could read it as a story told by a five-year-old. It's revolting when a media conglomerate decides, no doubt after months of studies and focus groups, that this is the best web-comic ever made, the one that would draw the most viewers if translated to television.

But I have a horrible suspicion that they're right (3).

It's almost sweet that in America, it's possible even for a five-year-old web-comic author to hit the big time. It's horrifically depressing that in America, only a five-year-old web-comic author can (4).

To entertain a baby, just keep doing random things. The baby will be thrilled every time something, anything, unexpected happens. It's cute to see a baby react that way. It's not cute if someone gets into the featured box or prime-time television by doing the same thing.

1. I make an exception for Salvador Dali.

2. Bad Horse's 32nd maxim: Anytime anyone other than a chemist uses the word "purity", they are full of shit.

3. See Family Guy.

4. Actually, I think he's 8 now.