Mark Twain, if he were still kicking, would agree with you. So you’re in pretty good company.

Why is this not higher? Definitely a case of turning trash into treasure. There was a trend in the aughts of writing, for example, comics where Batman is actually a sadistic pedophile (Robin loollz amirite?!), or where Superman is a grey who abducts and vivisects people (alien haha!?) because everyone wanted to be like Alan Moore writing Watchmen. Well… as it turns out, even Alan Moore isn’t always as good as when he wrote Watchmen and graphic novels need more than just a fancy concept.

I always thought Mark Twain was a boring, dated, moralizing writer based on Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Then I read literally anything else the man wrote… he’s hilarious! I always wondered why he was described as a “humorist” because Huckleberry Finn has only very occasional moments of levity. As it turns out, the only reason high school kids read it is because it’s a “slave book” and you can’t read too many of those in high school. Which, fair enough, but it definitely gives folks a strange idea about one of the greatest American writers of all time.