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Pedro and Me is the product of two media: television and sequential art. The overlaps between the two media as well as the contrasts in how they each handle Pedro and Judd's story are intriguing. Both are, in their own way, pop culture mediums, with each, over the last century, struggling to the surface (and sometime re-submerging) of academic credibility. As part of his essay, "The Art in the Popular", Paul Cantor discusses his growing acceptance of television as a viable space for scholarly attention. "Getting our students to 'read' popular culture critically may well become our task as teachers in an age increasingly dominated by the mass media. If students can learn to reflect on what they view in movies or in television, the process may eventually make them better readers of literature" (28). He argues that this is part of the Socratic method — "Plato should prompt us, when we look at our own culture, to look high and low to appreciate its full achievement" (36).

Cantor does not look too low, however, because his discussion is entirely devoid of mentioning comic books. Sad but true, Ortiz notes that "the form remains less popular with mainstream reading audiences in the U.S. than, say, in Europe or Latin America" (33). Nonetheless, few would argue that the place of American comic books (whether they're called sequential art, graphic novels, visual narratives, et cetera) is still within the realm of pop culture. "Plato thus helps us to distinguish two levels of popular culture. On the one hand, there are the merely popular artists such as Agathon, who care for nothing but popularity. […] I believe that Plato was willing to acknowledge that some poets, even though popular, might possess a genuine form of wisdom" (Cantor 34). For many, Judd's Pedro and Me "demonstrate[s] both his mastery of that form and its applicability to all the very serious issues raised by his story" (Ortiz 33). That is, he selected the medium for its suitability and his personal ability — not to pander to comic shop fanboys; this would argue for its inclusion in Plato's second category, works of art which " present unconventional ideas in ways that are acceptable and even entertaining to a mass audience. Classic works of art do not always carry a neat label informing us: 'This is one for the ages'" (Cantor 36-37). The best we can hope for as signs are adulations like Behrens' delcaring how Judd "put all of his talent for visual arts as well as words into Pedro and Me, which he describes as 'a long-form comic book'" (34).

In both the cases of The Real World and Pedro and Me, the relationship of Pedro and Sean is chronicled. Their love is not only inspiring, but its portrayal is likewise remarkable, even in this day and age. Bear in mind that we have the antithesis of either a hetero- or white-normative configuration with Sean and Pedro: "a person of color actively living with another person of color in an interracial relationship" where both are men and HIV-positive (Muñoz 153). While the graphic novel Pedro and Me never actually displays it so graphically — whether that be due to Judd's personal artistic vision, the publisher's concerns, its use as a safe sex text, or some other consideration — MTV was rather explicit with Sean and Pedro's intimacy:

Sean and Pedro are shown in bed together as they lie on top of each other and plan their commitment ceremony. To MTV's credit, there has never been any scene of queer sociality like it on television. The scene of two gay men of color, both HIV positive, in bed together as they plan what is the equivalent of a marriage is like none that was then or now imaginable on television. (Muñoz 157)

While much television merely propagates the hetero-/white-normative status quo, several shows have sought to break new ground over the decades. Muñoz points to Pedro's relationship to another Cuban-American television star, "that he walked a road that was paved by a previous 'Latin star,' Ricky Ricardo" (152). But both the up-ending of race and the prominence of a compelling Latino point me to another landmark television show — the subject of appropriately informal banter between Pam, Judd, and Pedro in Pedro and Me: Star Trek.

Before Sean and Pedro ever exchanged a gay, interracial kiss on television — in fact, before anyone had exchanged an interracial kiss of any sort on TV — there was Star Trek. Gene Roddenbury's show was meant to depict a future free of racism, as denoted by its multi-ethnic crew. Of course, that crew was still led by a heterosexual, swaggering white captain, but that is only to say that Roddenbury's vision was often out-voted by either the television executives or his own limitations. William Snyder says:

Star Trek does have a strong vein of racism running through it, but this racism is not directed towards the minority regulars (that would have caused major problems). Instead, this racism was directed towards Mr. Spock (portrayed by Leonard Nimoy). […] Roddenberry had originally wanted to cast a black man in Spock's role (Interview 8), but it seems rather doubtful if the same remarks could have been made about Spock were he played by a Black.

The show did not escape racism so much as confront it, even in the most ham-fisted way. Of particular importance and relevance to both The Real World and Pedro and Me, Star Trek featured "television's first interracial kiss (widely acknowledged as such in the literature). […] The script called for either Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock, under control of his alien captors, to kiss Lt. Uhura. According to Fred Freiberger, producer of the episode, the show was caught in a bind- if they had Spock kiss her, the critics would say the show was too scared to have a White man kiss a Black woman, and if they had Kirk with with Uhura in the scene with no kiss, then they would have gotten the same reaction" (Snyder). Ultimately, Kirk kissed Uhura — of course, not without the deniability of mind-control and fan rumors of the kiss being 'faked' with careful photography. Nevertheless, the scene was aired and a road was paved.

Similarly, in addition to featuring a diverse crew, Star Trek also manifested Latinos in the future. Specifically, Ricardo Montalban, having a similar "accent that must have sounded very 'tropical' to North American ears" as Pedro and Ricardo, portrayed the memorable Khan, one of a breed of superhumans (Muñoz 152). Of course, there is something just as amazing about a Latino on television in the 1960s portraying a futuristic superhuman as there is something predictable about his being the antagonist — and his being thwarted by Kirk. Nevertheless, the character proved so outstanding that Khan was the titular nemesis for the franchise's second foray into motion pictures, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. As Miguel Morales reports:

As I watched it, what interested me was not the daring captain Kirk or the famed Starship Enterprise; it was the villain. The evil Khan portrayed by Ricardo Montalban was the first Latino I ever saw in space. He was powerful and cunning. Ok, so he was the bad guy. I was just happy to know that Latinos had made it into the future. I must admit that I admired the way he made Kirk squirm.

While I doubt that Judd was thinking of these echoes in terms of The Real World when having conversation with Pam and Pedro, there is a certain serendipity that their dialogue should focus on Star Trek. Not only is their spectating of the show interesting, but so is their discussion and analysis of it. Judd is curious why the gay men he knows find the Star Trek: The Next Generation character Dr. Beverly Crusher so beautiful, as compared to her crewmate, the leotard-garbed Deanna Troi. Pam observes that Judd is more drawn to the dark-haired women — a non-Aryan and moderately non-normative preference — he finds on TV, like Troi or NYPD Blue's Amy Brenneman. And Pedro, somewhat lost in a deluge of American pop culture reference, trumps the conversation by declaring that Captain Picard's dress uniform looks like a skirt. The two-page sequence is remarkably intertextual, ethnically engaging, ironically non-heteronormative, gender mixing, identity fluctuating, and down-right amusing.

There is something rebellious in itself for Judd to select the sequential art format for chronicling his friendship and time with Pedro. Of course, it is his medium of professional choice, but that should not make the act of doing it any less rebellious. If anything, it is more in keeping with his pseudo-hipster tendencies: "I am just one cat in a world of cool cats, and everything interesting is crazy or at least so the Squares who do not know how to swing would say" (Mailer 598). Whereas MTV might have authorized a television special or a publisher would have given him a book deal, Judd went the "crazy" route by staying true to his craft and composed a story dovetailing both the textual and the visual. This choice may actually be more logical than it seems, given The Real World's genesis on a music video network (at least, in theory). That is, both the music video and comic books engage similar issues with regards to their visual aspects and the location of their actual 'text'. In his essay on "Structural Relationships of Music and Images in Music Video", Alf Björnberg states, "The opinion has been proposed that, for the user, the music is somehow 'dominated' by the visuals" (349). Cynthia Fuchs seems to agree, saying "it is hard to think about any of these musical performers or performances without images […] music and images have been linked" (Fuchs 178). To jump from The Real World: San Francisco to a medium without images now sounds counter-intuitive. In fact, whether comic books' visual or textual elements are dominant in regards to one and another is a source of great debate between comic scholars. Writer, artist, and theorist Scott McCloud argues in a Sausurrean fashion that text — that is, the words within balloons or captions — is just an icon, like the peace symbol, a stop sign, or a star of David. "I'm using 'icon' to mean any image used to represent a person, place, or idea. […] 'Symbol' is a bit too loaded for me" (27). While he does chronicle seven ways in which these specifically textual icons can interact with the other images in a panel, words themselves are not essential to his definition of comic books' sequential art, as they are to other theorists like R.C. Harvey and Will Eisner. In all their cases, though, there is no comic without the visual elements, just as there is no music video without the television image.

Likewise, there is the issue with the term "text" — no longer referring to words, per se, but instead referring to an overall, referential work — for both video and comics. In his list of things we commonly think of as texts — "books, articles, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, flyers, and so on" — John Shepher omits comics, saying only that "an important element of this everyday concept of text is that texts are understood to have a tangible and visible form" (156). If "text is the visually and tangibly rendered form of language," what is the text of a visually dominant music video where "music is, like spoken language, sonic, made up of sound" and the images are only vaguely related to language? (157) Similarly, without an original script, what is the text for a comic book? Do earlier, unpublished drafts or sections, such as we have for Pedro and Me, count as legitimate portions of its text? And, what about music videos which alter the music they have been constructed to convey? (The Jennifer Lopez video for "If You Want My Love" featuring a dance section not contained in the original song is a fine example.) Can the word "text" be used the same for comics and videos as it is for novels and newspapers?

To some degree, both media alter at least the conceptualization of their author/creator to the audience, especially with autobiographically based graphic novels such as Pedro and Me, Maus, or Palestine, to name just a few. Admittedly, the overt absence of the author within the story is more common in comics than in videos which will more frequently protagonize the musician. Still, parallels can be drawn between Judd and fellow Tri-borough artiste, Bruce Springsteen, the singer/writer of the "Human Touch" video and its main actor. Björnberg analyzes the "Human Touch" text — a word I, of course, use advisedly — by breaking Springsteen into three: the trio of settings to the video each "features its own edition of Bruce Springsteen: Springsteen 1, the balladeer and narrator; Springsteen 2, the actor and protagonist of the narrative; and Springsteen 3, the 'guitar hero' from the streets" (362). Each also has its own personality for Springsteen. I am led to ask, then, how many versions of Judd we encounter between TheReal World and Pedro and Me? Given the artificiality of The Real World's camera-laden environment, I think we can ascertain at least two Judds, Judd1 and Judd2, on the television; one who plays to the camera (e.g. covering for Pedro's illness, hiding his blossoming romance with Pam, etc.) and a more authentic Judd (e.g. chatting about Star Trek, enjoying Monterey, etc.). For all his authenticity, Judd2 is not equivalent to the version I'll call Judd3, the author/artist of Pedro and Me, since Judd3 is a few years removed from Judd2, has experienced both Pedro's death and its aftermath, and is under an unknown amount of personal and publisher's editing. Neither is the character of Judd in Pedro and Me equivalent with the feigning Judd1; the character of Judd in Pedro and Me assumes a variety of roles, some copying in comic book form Judd1 and Judd2, while others delve into his youth, exceed the confines of the television show, or are purely fictional (e.g. chatting with a talking HIV virus).