Marquez

When I read Marquez, I cannot help but compare him to Jhonen Vasquez. While Mr. Vasquez's work is centered more around his cartoons, the brutal intent in the delivery of the message is the same. Marquez in "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" shows how people are so easily duped by their own devices. When the ancient decrepit angel failed to act awe inspiring and holy, people turned away and saw what they wanted to see. They wanted something fantastic and magical, such as the giant tarantula girl, whose tale of woe satisfied the villagers preconceived notions of the super natural. The villagers are made out as little better than sheep looking for greener grass. Jhonen Vasquez accomplished a similar goal using similar methods in his cartoon Invader Zim. In Invader Zim, an alien has inserted himself into human middle school and his disguise is rather poor. His green skin is obvious, his strange attire, even his unfamiliarity with water should be duly noted by the human children at school as suspicious. However the only one who sees through Zim's disguise is Dib. At show and tell Dib does a presentation on the overwhelming evidence surrounding Zim. At the end of his presentation, a hulking alien bursts in through the class room ceiling and kidnaps Zim. Following that event, Dib beseeches his fellow classmates to see that Zim is an alien. However, at that very moment, bird poop falls through the exposed ceiling onto Dibs shoulders and the whole class room bursts out into hysteric laughter. Marquez and Vasquez seem sharply aware of man's dangerous habit of only seeing what man wants to see and either discredit or all together ignore any evidence to the contrary of their idealistic impressions of reality.