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.

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.

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. )

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?