Comic Sans: a Rebuke.

My fabulous, multi-talented friend and lettering guru Jim Campbell posted a link on the 2000ad forum to an imagined monologue by the font Comic Sans... A fun piece of creative writing, in defense of the much criticised font. It struck a chord with me though and so I found myself constructing a rebuke on behalf of Dom Casual...

So, In answer to the imagined monologue of Comic Sans by Mike Lacher via Timothy McSweeney's website.

YEAH, YOU'RE COMIC SANS, WELL, I'M DOM CASUAL AND I'M NOT HAPPY.

Guess what, Comic Sans, turns out you are as stupid as you look. You can't compare your self to the likes of Univers... if I was a screwdriver, I wouldn't compare myself to a chisel would I? You need to frame your argument in context. You are at best merely an informal font.
You are not the straight talking man on the street of the font world. You are not a superhero rock star fighting the good fight for fun typography either.

But you're damn right, I don't like seeing you everywhere. You think everyone likes you but you're wrong. They're just using you because you're easy, available and free and that's rarely a good set of characteristics. It's not some elitist pretentious thing either, you're just ugly and not in an interesting way.

You say you're fun, with your multi-purpose uses, you're so wrong, back to my tool analogy - I wouldn't use a spanner to knock in a nail.

The thing is, there are a lot of other fonts out there that are just as much fun as you, myself included. Most of them, more qualified for the job and lets face it, a lot better looking too.

It's these other fonts you're putting out of work, not Helvetica or Futura who can hold their own. It's Challenge, Frankfurter, Hand Drawn and all the other quirky, informal fonts that just do a better job than you ever could. They're not getting the usage they deserve because of you. It's not the c**k-hat typographers you need to worry about you s**t-stick, it's us, the other fonts you think you're mightier than.

So Guess what? Yeah, that's right we've got a posse together, Balloon and Cooper are going to hold you down and then Flash and his brother Flash light are going to work you over a bit. When they're finished, we're just going to leave you alone with One Stroke Script, you've muscled in on his turf once too often.

Just because you're famous doesn't make you good, there is a fast food restaurant in every town, this is not a good thing either. Over saturation can breed contempt and that's the kindest thing I can say about you. Just because the general computer owning population can't see what's wrong with you and just because you're on every computer made since 1994 does not justify your over-use.
So f**k you Comic Sans, you're the fast food of fonts, no substance, no style and of absolutely no beneficial value.
I hope you die alone and penniless in a bin you arrogant, self important jerk.

And if you think of any comebacks, don't bother, I know a whole lot of real comic-book fonts that would just love to know where you live.

Right, I've got a date with Korinna and she comes in extra bold and multilingual, if you know what I mean.