Evidence continues to mount in support of my theory that something catastrophic befell Western pop culture circa 1997.
Exhibit A: Over the past year, comic book artist Ethan Van Sciver has launched a successful second career as a YouTuber. He does aspiring artist portfolio reviews and a how-to-draw instructional series, but he hit it big thanks to his laconic commentary on comics and movies–particularly Disney’s butchering of Star Wars. I check in on his channel once a day to keep abreast of what normies who are just getting woke to the wholesale pillaging of their culture are up to.
In a recent video, Van Sciver goes into rather candid detail about his reasons for leaving DC Comics. He describes the typical SJW-enforced hostile work environment, even adding the usual report of cowed Conservatives holing up under their desks.
But that’s neither here nor there. This video’s relevance for our purposes today is that EVS makes the observation that current woes besetting the comic book industry started in the late 90s. He traces the start of the troubles to 1998, but it’s close enough for punk rock.
Exhibit B: Multiple friends pointed me toward this video by session musician Rick Beato after my original post on pop culture’s terminal 1997 decline. Here, Rick and a couple of his fellow musicians explain the death of rock and roll. Of note, they call the time of death at 1996.
Rock died in 1996. Comics followed in 1998. Everything else died in 1997. Piecing together the evidence, a startling picture emerges. Western pop culture, which had been a world-bestriding colossus for almost a century, suffered total collapse over a roughly eighteen month period ca. late 96-early 98. That’s not an asteroid impact so much as a killer plague that swept the West like wildfire.
Identifying the exact pathogen exceeds the scope of this post and will probably take the combined efforts of guys like EVS, the larger crowd of dissident bloggers, and myself over an extended period of time. We do know there were a few survivors who evolved immunity to the cultural virus that wiped out most artists and turned others into zombie parasites shambling through the halls of our ruined institutions. It’s a case of life imitating art modeled after I Am Legend.
What we do know is that the surviving remnant of Western artists have a big job on our hands rebuilding pop culture. I urge you to pick up a pen, a brush, or a camera and do your part. I’m doing mine.
