Art Quote by Joe Simon

“Comic art is just different” reads like a polite correction with teeth. Joe Simon isn’t asking for comics to be let into the museum; he’s refusing the premise that they need a museum’s permission. The phrase “just different” sidesteps the old hierarchy that treats painting as “real art” and everything popular as a watered-down cousin. It’s a veteran creator’s way of saying: stop grading us with someone else’s rubric.

The second sentence tightens the argument: “It’s art on its own terms.” That’s not defensive, it’s jurisdictional. Simon is staking out comics as a medium with its own grammar: sequencing, panel rhythm, the choreography of the page, the elastic relationship between word and image, time rendered as layout. You can’t evaluate that properly using the standards of a single illustration or a standalone painting any more than you can judge film by theater’s rules.

Context matters. Simon, co-creator of Captain America and a key architect of midcentury American comics, spent his career inside an industry long dismissed as disposable, even dangerous. Comics were mass-produced, commercial, and aimed at kids until they weren’t. They were policed, moral-panicked, and treated as cultural noise. His line carries the weary confidence of someone who watched “low” culture become legacy culture without ever fully shaking the stigma.

The subtext is a warning to critics and gatekeepers: admiration that comes with condescension is still condescension. If you want to take comics seriously, take their constraints seriously too.