Life & Wisdom Quote by Robert Kirkman

Kirkman lands the joke with a double feint: first, the earnest claim of proximity to adolescence ("only 24"), then the immediate puncture of that sincerity with the kind of breezy cynicism creators use to survive their own mythmaking. The line performs self-awareness as a marketing strategy. He knows the pose expected of a writer in a youth-tilted medium: stay young, stay relevant, stay fluent in teen interiority. So he mock-confesses the industry trick everyone suspects anyway: you can "fake it" because authenticity is often less policed than it is advertised.

The real bite is in the closer: "it's not like there are any teenagers that still read comics". It's funny because it sounds like a throwaway dig, but it carries a cultural snapshot from the early 2000s, when American comics were still shaking off the long hangover of the speculator crash and the stigma of niche fandom. Kirkman is pointing at a mismatch between who comics supposedly serve (teenagers, the traditional coming-of-age readership) and who actually buys them (older fans with disposable income, collector habits, and gatekeeping energy). That gap gives him license to be sloppy, or at least to pretend he can be.

Subtextually, it's also a defensive flex. By claiming teens aren't around, he lowers the stakes of representing them accurately, while subtly repositioning his work toward adult readers without admitting he's abandoned the youthful ideal. The wit masks a pragmatic truth: in comics, audience is destiny, and everyone is negotiating it on the page.