Recently Carlos Santana interrupted a performance to deliver his thoughts on trans health care, repeating tired old ideas about gender and outdated science. Meanwhile Stereogum asked Alice Cooper about the controversy over repressive laws on gender affirming care. His answer was worse than Carlos’ rant; subsequently he lost a business deal with a goth oriented cosmetics company (oh, the irony.) Earlier this year Dee Snider and Paul Stanley, two cis dudes who made careers bending their gender presentation, opined on gender affirming care in ways similarly ignorant to Alice and Carlos. Stanley apologized somewhat better than Carlos, while Dee accused the trans community of intolerance of allies who disagree with them. Old people, especially rock stars, should stop watching Fox News or reading Jesse Signal. It does them no good.
As for the comic strip, it may be the first to have Fetch as a silent observer. He lets the youth speak for themselves. Art-wise, it was tempting to actually depict Carlos, Dee, Alice, and Paul — I do love exercising my caricature muscles — but I couldn’t find a good way to have them all interact. So combining them into a bloviating has-been seemed like a better artistic choice.
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