Jason R.:

Mr. Kreider appreciates your counsel about the whiskeys of Scotland, of which delicacy he is passionate fond.  He will test with this misty mixture about which you speak.

He is in disagreement with your assessment of his work as "universally popular."  I will say to you in confidence that it is simply his choleric way and not so that you take it personally.  He is terrible to accept the complements, although not as very terrible as he is as accepting criticism.

Respect,

C.-H.

Patrick D.,

You are correct that Mr. Kreider does not look at television or even have one, due to the potential for addiction and that he believes it makes him more stupid as well as terrified.  However he recognizes the program that you refer to because his neighbor, the insane pig-affectionate ex-Sailor, is a frequent "extra" on it.  He is intrigued by your description and may look at this last season on DVDs, which he considers an acceptable orderly form of TV.

He expresses additionally his disappointment that your compatriots have voted for a conservative government, which he mentions has not worked so much well for your gargantuesque and deranged neighbor to the south.

Respect to your reasonable and peaceful country,

C.-H.

Daniel E. J.:

I make excuses for the delay of this answer. With the furore surrounding the entry of Mr. Kreider's into the contest of cartoons of the Holocaust of Iran we in some unspecified way or other missed one week of the letters of the readers, and only now lets us be catching up with itself.

With regard to the gibberish of computer, neither Mr. Kreider nor I knows such painful things, but your indecipherable complaints were dispatched to our Master of the Web Dave.  As regards the statements of the artist at least we believe that the problem of "scrolling" was satisfactoriy solved.  However it is sometimes necessary to reproduce the drawings with a big size because the lines of Mr. Kreider' s are so much in a manner obsessing tiny and dense.

As for the statements of the artist being maintained at a distance of one click, this is for the profit of the readers who do not want that their pleasure of the drawings is sullied by the proper interpretation of the artist.

Mr. Kreider transports his appreciation for your message. Still, I regret delay in my answer.

Respect,

C.-H.

Jay C.:

Mr. Kreider accepts the legitimacy of your interpretation concerning the alienation of nature, of treated cheese and the depression, but as we were flooded with theories about the speaking animals of the Bible and grew tired of this matter, and are still irritable when it is raised.

Mr. Kreider accepts with the graciousness your compliments on his alphabet.

Respect,

C.-H.

Fraser S.:

Mr. Kreider tardily advises you not to speak about the defects of the babies to the ladies.  He is tired of the glances of the dislike.

Mr. Kreider is happy to bring short and hollow chucklings to the vale of the tears Scotland.

Respect,

C.-H.

Zebulun:

As you know Mr. Kreider is now entirely muddled in the total violent conflicts of the cartoons.  He thanks you for your offer of refuge, but it is not clear with him that a "backhouse" in Indiana would of necessity be preferable to impalement by insane Mohammedans.

Mr. Kreider appreciates your compliments on his work and is happy to have caused your merry Monday agitating.

Respect,

C.-H.

Mike W.:

Mr. Kreider wishes me to thank you for your compliments, your personal thoughts relating to the inhuman hybrids, and most particularly for buying his books, which he deplores far a too small number have done.  Bitterly and maudlin he curses the ungrateful who attentively read his website and glut themselves on its archives and spend not a dollar in his work.  O he is voluble on this subject.

Further he orders me to convey to you his juvenile speculation that, rather than the superb powers, you are to have half-human, half-hamster children-- "mansters," he calls them.  It is funny with him.

Regret,

C.H.

The thoughts of Mr. Kreider's on the cartoon riots were to be announced in the "artist's statement" this week, which our master of the web Dave did not post yet while he is unfortunately in Houston making sure that Mr. Kreider will one day obtain his ultimate goal, the Moon.  I will tell you that primarily he is 1.)  envious that his own drawings never encouraged such violence but 2.) quivering with excitement that cartoons are causing newsworthy events for the first time in a century. He also wishes that the Moslems would become used to being offended constantly, as he is.

In the balloon of thought is former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.  It was pointed out too late to Mr. Kreider that he could have the thought of somebody who was not a president, or a man.

Respect,

C.-H.

Marty F.:

Mr. Kreider asked me to give the appreciation for your compliments.  It is appropriate that Mr. Cheney must surely narrowly be attached to J. Jonah Jameson, however not so narrowly as for Lex Luthor. 

He regrets to have failed to include the armada of the Korean Man-Beaters in the apocalyptic drawing of this week.

Respect,

C.-H.

Alex,

It pleases me very much to know my book is being read and enjoyed in Greece, home of democracy. Rest assured I harbor nothing but fond feelings for Greece and its people and especially its health care system, and I still intend to return there someday. Also, as everyone there was anxious to emphasize, the man who stabbed me was not Greek but Macedonian.

I am aware that your politicians are corrupt and inefficient, but at least they are powerless to screw up much of the world outside of Greece. Our government's been meddling with the rest of the world since the end of WWII--starting with the CIA-sponsored coup in Greece. Sorry about that.

Yia sas,

Tim

Steven B.:

Neither Mr. Kreider nor myself has any idea what is meant by things such as RSS. Your question should be mentioned to our Master of the Web, Dave.

Respect,

C.-H.

Danny G.:

Hitler is always funny (except during the actual Second World War), and your idea is no exception. I like to think of him realizing it just wasn't worth it--maybe saying, "Oy." However, I've already drawn my Holocaust cartoon, as you will see on the website.

Tim

Bill K. formerly of Ednor Gardens:

Mr. Kreider appreciates your complement on an older cartoon of his.  He reports the fact that 99 Luftballoons was a favourite of his juvenile self and does not wish you to malign the Nina.  In particular he liked how the name of the "Captain Kirk" leapt out from the German.

Respect,

C.-H.

The interested readers can see this week the Holocaust cartoon of Mr. Kreider' s, which he submitted both to the cruel Iranians and self-loathing Jews. He is carefree with the insult of the humorless. Alas he fears the wild and pitiless humor of the Jews and has little hope of victory on their territory.

For emotional reasons rather than legal he refuses to discuss the fiasco of the W______s.

Respect,

C.-H.

Courageously Anonymous:

Mr. Kreider thanks you for your drawing, which he regrets he does not reproduce in fear of revenge from the homicidal excessively pious person.  He informs you that he has in the past drawn a similar cartoon of the model Ms. Claudia Schiffer, who is sacred only to the worshippers of Onan.

Respect,

C.-H.

Nita G.:

Mr. Kreider is gratified to cause your weekly smile.  He also urges you to take oysters and sushi and the 32-ounce beers at the market of Cross Street, which he ensures will raise your weekly quotient at least 100% of smiling.

Respect,

C.-H.

Mr. Kreider thanks you for your compliments on his recent work.  However, he explains why he cannot send the free book to you because: 1.)  they are not for him to give away, they belong to his publisher, and also 2.)  if he gives them away it demolishes the goal to sell them.  It is the goal of the cartoonist as of all the people to make a life.  It is a delicate subject with him and I will not repeat all that he says about it.  Concerning your question about former President Regan he reacts only with the weariness and the dislike and refers you to the artist's statement of 6/9/04.

Although you do not to seem to be the antichrist you do seem a small bit batty.  What is the significance of the fries, please?

Respect,

C.-H.

Tristan B.:

Mr. Kreider sincerely thanks you for your pleasant words about his work.  To be compared favorably with the likes of Brunetti and Woodring is the high praise indeed. He wishes only that your evaluation were more widely shared.  But he is a bitter man and I fear that no quantity of praise is ever sufficient to alleviate his resentment at the world, thus do not feel intimidated.

Many readers have inquired concerning posters and shirts of T.  The laziness and the inertia of Mr. Kreider should not be underestimated but I will still suggest this to him once more.

Respect,

C.-H.

G. B.,

Mr. Kreider thanks you for the writing but wishes me to inform you that he is indifferent to your opinions.

Respect,

C.-H.

Danny:

The Arab port deal is a truly strange story. Everybody has very strident opinions about it but nobody seems to have any idea what's actually happened, or what it might mean. Whether there's anything amiss or not, it just doesn't look good to middle America, the President handing control of our ports over to a bunch of A-rabs. The weirdest thing about it is that this, for unknown reasons, is the first-ever issue on which President Bush has chosen to take an intransigent stand against his own party. I have no idea whether, as some suggest, there's some back-room deal between the Bush family and some sinister Arab cabal, or whether the President's just incapable of admitting error, and, like Hitler, insists on pressing suicidally forward when defeat is inevitable. It reminds me of his pigheaded insistence that Harriet Miers would indeed be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. The guy just hates not getting his own way. I have no idea what the truth of this story is, which I really haven't followed closely at all except to delight in Bush's humiliation.

Cheers,

Tim

Steve L.:

Thanks from Mr. Kreider to you for your compliments. Mr. Kreider is crushed to learn that his technique of prolongation of arousal via the Holocaust was preempted by others.  He really heard of it himself from his friend Ben, a repulsive person.  It was also employed on the radio show Loveline, to which Mr. Kreider was unfortunately addicted.  But this is the way of the comedy.

Respect,

C.-H.

Yazan Al-S.,

Thank you for your thoughtful response to my artist's statement, and for taking a tone more moderate than my own. Your points are well taken. I am not sure whether my webmaster has updated the site yet, but I did forward him a revised version of my letter to Hamshahri in which I replaced the phrase "Arab bigotry" with "your bigotry," since the former made too broad and unfair an accusation and the latter is meant to refer specifically to the newspaper. Also, as you point out, the Iranians consider themselves Persians, not Arabs, which gets into a whole issue of ethnic distinctions about which I admittedly know nothing.

However, you're right that my line about the Arabic sense of humor was written out of ignorance. Of course broad, unfair generalizations are one's stock in trade as a humorist, but in this instance I was indeed subscribing thoughtlessly to a stereotype that's all too pervasive in the U.S, and for this I sincerely apologize. (Although, in my defense, I will point out that that sentence is carefully worded so as to refer to perception rather than reality: "Arabs do not have a reputation for hilariousness.") I know that the media only ever shows us angry chanting fanatics as though they were representative of the whole of Islam, just as the only Christians you ever hear about are ignorant bigoted dingbats. I also know that Islamic civilization was the one keeping it together throughout the Middle Ages when Europe had effectively dropped the ball. I appreciate your calling me on my blanket dismissal of a whole culture and will bear in mind that there are humorless dogmatists in all cultures, as well as funny and thoughtful people. I regret that the former so often drown out the latter. I consider all funny and thoughtful people, regardless of their race, religion, or nationality, to be my allies in the war against seriousness and stupidity, and I am grateful to have you as one.

Sincerely,

Tim Kreider

P.S. Your point about Western hypocrisy concerning free expression is also astute. Hamshahri's citing the prosecution of Holocaust deniers is a bad example of this, but your citing the harassment of al Jazeera is a good one. I did take on a somewhat jingoistic tone, it's true. I am proud of the American comedic tradition of which I am a small and marginal part, but I guess I ought to have spoken on behalf of the humorous against the humorless.

P.P.S. I also agree that the cartoons about Mohammed were not funny, except for the one with the suicide bombers arriving in heaven and being told they were out of virgins. Come on. That's pretty good.

Keith Knight, Jr.,

Thanks very much for your kind words. It always means a lot to hear praise from a colleague.

Strange days for cartoonists, eh? Exhilarating, in a way, but also dreadful--all this over silly pictures? I only hope nobody gets killed over my cartoon--or, if they do, that it is not me.

Tim

Mr. Fisher,

Mr. Kreider exchanges the congratulations of his colleague Mr. Bolling, of whose work he is un envieux admirateur a long time and whom he warmly remembers to meet at S.P.X. a few years ago.  He is in the cordial agreement with you that the remainder of your colleagues are a "group of cats" (?) and is happy to have worthy competition in accepting this challenge.*  He points out to you the famous quotation of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the journalist of gonzo:  "When to go becomes strange, the strange become professionals."  He would wish that the better man should triumph but does not wish to compromise his chances.

In confidence I will say to you that it is difficult to be the intern of a profession so temperamental and lascivious.  Perhaps it is different for you.

Respect,

C.-H.

*Ruben: this isn't the first time we've duplicated gags. The most recent example I can think of was a month or two ago when we both drew panels about the domestic spying program in which NSA agents were eavesdropping and commenting on banal conversations about hot celebrities--I even mentioned Mary Louise-Parker in my accompanying commentary (what a hottie). It's increasingly hard to be a humorist these days, not only because reality has become so hard to parody but because my colleagues are so quick on the draw. -T.K.