9.25.01 ...it's a technical fact that several of U2's guitar riffs are very similar across songs, if not the exact same. I have nothing against U2; I've been a fan for a while and played several of their songs in concert before. I got several e-mails from U2 fans who loved this next comic. But as we're about to see, someone took the joke a little too personally...

Next day, there's a "Letter to the Editor" printed in response to my sacrilegious comic:

*****
Unjust mockery of U2 (From the 9.26.01 Cavalier Daily)
I am writing on behalf of the millions of U2 fans around the world in regards to Dave Werner's preposterous depiction of U2 in his "Second Nature" comic strip on Sept. 25. First of all, U2 is one of, if not the most experimental rock group in history. From the band's earliest days in Dublin, to the present, U2 has broken free from the traditional limitations of what a rock band - and rock music - could and couldn't do. The band has combined an original sound with honest lyrics and a challenging social message.

While synthesizer acts and bubblegum pop bands dominated the early '80s, U2 went off in its own direction. From its moving and inspired document of adolescence, "Boy," to the political force of "War," to the spiritually-influenced "Joshua Tree," to the industrial guitar and altered vocals of "Achtung Baby," to the electronica-inluenced album "Pop," all the way to the present soulful, infectious, critically acclaimed "All That You Can't Leave Behind," U2 has been a source of originality.

Werner could have not been more wrong about U2's lead guitar player, The Edge. A quote from Guitar Magazine's "Top 100 Players of All Time" states, "U2's the Edge rewrote the book on rock guitar by introducing trance repetition that 'edged' and lulled the audience at the same time. His signature use of delays, reverb, harmonizers and other effects gave rock a layered, more dramatic impact than ever before."

Guitar.com agrees: "Like Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen and precious few others, the Edge changed our perception of rock guitar. Such was the impact of 'the Edge guitar sound' - an atmospheric amalgam of partial chords, harmonics, echo repeats, drones, slide, feedback and other effects - that by that generation [the middle of the '90s], music trade magazines in Great Britain and the U.S. were flooded with classified ads for 'Guitarist, U2 style,' just as they had been with ads for Van Halen clones several years earlier."

My advice to Mr. Werner is to pick up a couple U2 albums and just listen to them, or better yet, go to their concert in Baltimore on Oct. 19. Oh wait, like all their other shows for the Elevation Tour, it's sold out.
-Mark R. Santangelo Jr.
COMM IV
*****

I understand where he's coming from. It's true that the Edge's style is incredibly innovative; you can always identify U2 songs by either the Edge's riffs or Bono's trademark howls, whichever comes first. However, Mr. Santangelo implied that I had no idea what I was talking about. That's usually true, but not this time.

9.27.01 ...I responded to the letter with this comic the next day. I knew that most U2 fans and the band themselves regard their "Pop" album as a career low (Actually, it was the first U2 album that I ever got and I surprisingly like it still). In case you're not a minister of the Church of U2, Beautiful Day was a recent single and the video takes place in an airport. The first panel references one of their best albums, The Joshua Tree.

The moral of the story? No band is perfect. No comic artist is perfect. And don't take the comics page too seriously, unless Garfield takes on Euthanasia.