Everything I draw ends up wearing a bow-tie

Interesting stand point, and not actually one that I agree with. I’ve been writing stories for a while now, in different ways- text, animation, comics- and whilst I wouldn’t profess to being an expert in the field, the thing that I love the most is that you can communicate your ideas to hundreds of people, and yet every single person interprets it in their own unique way.

The best stories don’t rely on one ‘true’ interpretation; they work on different levels. To condemn people for not seeing the bigger picture is a pointless and, frankly, petty exercise. How people see a story depends on their own story, just as how you see the world around you is constantly affected by how you have experienced it up to this point. I don’t want to write stories with a market audience; I want to write stories. Something that can be read by anyone at any point in their lives and still be entertaining and relevant to them.

So, yes, you can take TPoH as an openly metaphorical journey, or as an exploration of the idea of a story itself, but you can also take it at surface level and I won’t think any less of you. In fact, dealing with stories that are constantly trying to belittle the reader by being philosophical and highbrow often make me wonder why the author decided to write a story at all. We are taking the reader on an adventure, not testing them. Why beat people around the head if they’ve never read Plato or Socrates before this? I’m certainly not expecting everyone who reads this comic to know every silent comedy inside out. If they know the material, they will see it and appreciate it, and if they don’t, it should still enrich the story for them without complicating it. Nothing is lost by putting a little extra in, and perhaps one day they will make those connections, and who knows? Maybe it will be this story that helps them to understand the others that it relates to.

It actually interests me to see what people take from what I make. It’s also worth noting that not everyone who reads it will comment on it, and people who comment often do so by agreeing or disagreeing with the preceding comment. Everything is context.

TL:DR

Chill it bro, we all good.