Gone are the good old days when every movie villain had a British accent. Now it’s got to be one of those despicable Frenchmen, and best of all if played by Lambert Wilson…

Take a page out of Machiavelli, another from Orwell’s 1984, and you know if you want to get somewhere as a dictator, make sure and provide someone for your people to hate.

French-bashing is pathetic. On some shows on Fox news, it seems to be policy, but it’s also in movies, TV shows, and it’s gotten so common, at times it’s practically a given.

Now it’s one thing to disagree with a government, or a philosophy, but it’s another to boycott a nation wholesale. When others do that about Americans, they come off as ignorant pigs. Does the same apply here?

Notwithstanding France’s crooked leadership or its occasional disastrous policy — how about our own? — where comics are concerned, the land of wine and cheese is a place of phenomenal, flourishing, pioneering creativity.

In the US, many comics readers know this well. Plus, nowadays, graphic-novel creators influence one another around the planet, from the US to Europe to Asia and beyond. So I’m damn proud First Second will champion good authors from everywhere, including, yes, a few Freedom Funnies.

I was just going to post the following journal doodle without writing anything, but then what’s a blog if you don’t sound off, and get hot under the collar every now and again?