Conflict in Literature

Or: How I Became a Meme

When you put comics on the Internet every week for fifteen years, it’s bound to happen.

One day something you make will be turned into meme.

It started with this comic:

I learned this literary trope in Mrs. Carson’s senior English class, Mulvane High School, 2004. Mrs. Carson introduced me to wonderful books, ideas, and vocabulary words. Without her teaching and encouragement I might not be a writer today.

The last panel was inspired by BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS by Kurt Vonnegut, a novel where the hand of the author reaches down and swipes at the protagonist—literally.

I first submitted this sketch to the New York Times Book Review, where I’ve contributed drawings since 2012.

They rejected it.

No big deal—usually I submit three to five rough sketches, and they almost always accept one or two. Not a bad batting average.

Here’s one inspired by high school English class that did make the Book Review cut:

Denouement! Great vocabulary word—thanks, Mrs. Carson.

I still liked the Conflict in Literature idea, so I inked a final and posted it to my Incidental Comics blog and social media. It went viral, as they used to say:

A few years later I included Conflict in my book of literary comics, I WILL JUDGE YOU BY YOUR BOOKSHELF. The Story Coaster made it in the book as well.

Right when I WILL JUDGE YOU BY YOUR BOOKSHELF was published in 2020, the whole world went viral. Instead of embarking on a raucous book tour, I gave readings via Zoom and judged people’s bookshelves from afar. I got to talk to awesome people like Kristen Radtke and Jeff Kinney about the books on my shelf. (Lots of books with pictures—don’t judge me too harshly.)

The title of my book was weirdly prescient: suddenly everyone was judging each other’s bookshelves. We peeked over the shoulders of our friends and coworkers to see what they were reading. We wondered if celebrities and politicians being interviewed at home actually read any of the books on their shelves. We questioned why Jeff Bezos had so few books.

I WILL JUDGE YOU BY YOUR BOOKSHELF was named a 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards finalist and translated into a bunch of different languages.

Around this time, Conflict in Literature was taking on a life of its own.

It got picked up by the corners of the internet that take sticky images and transform them into endless variations of weirdness.

It became a meme.

The meme lives on a decade after I posted the original comic. I saw this tweet a couple weeks ago:

There’s not only Conflict in Daffy Duck. There’s Conflict in The Simpsons. Spongebob. Seinfeld. Mad Men. Pixar. Even Kanye West.

And a slew of other games, shows, and movies I’m completely unfamiliar with.

I can see why this remixing works. The Conflict in Literature panels are like a Dungeons & Dragons alignment chart. (I’ve never played D&D, but I’m intrigued.)

I’m not sure how I feel about this literary re-appropriation. A tiny part of me wants to send a cease and desist to the entire internet. (Impossible, of course.)

A bigger part of me wants to make my own versions of the meme.

Conflict in Calvin & Hobbes? Conflict in Stranger Things? Conflict in The Wu-Tang Clan? Conflict in The Kansas City Chiefs?

That’s the deal with making art. Most of it will be forgotten.

But make enough good work, some may be lucky enough to live on. And often, in order to keep living, it will mutate into something weirder.

As much as an author wants to wield godlike control over their work, it’s impossible. Once a piece is out in the world, it’s out of the author’s hands.