I'll let you in on a secret: I can't stand Jay Ward. I hate being

“I’ll let you in on a secret: I can’t stand Jay Ward. I hate being compared to Rocky and Bullwinkle. It’s just a different style of humor.”
Thus spoke John Kricfalusi, the fiery creator of Ren & Stimpy, whose words burn with the spirit of artistic defiance — the same fire that has driven creators, philosophers, and poets since the dawn of craft. In this statement lies not mere rivalry, but a declaration of individual vision, the cry of an artist refusing to be confined within another’s shadow. Kricfalusi’s rejection of comparison is not hatred but hunger — the hunger to create a new voice, to break from tradition, and to carve his own mark into the stone of cultural memory.

To “hate being compared” is the lament of every true innovator. The world, comfortable with patterns, seeks to name what it sees — to call the new by the name of the old. But creativity, like fire, resists containment. Kricfalusi understood that imitation, even in praise, can be a form of limitation. To be likened to Jay Ward, the famed creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle, was to be told that his humor, his style, his soul, belonged to an earlier age. Yet his art was not of nostalgia but of rebellion — a humor that throbbed with rawness, chaos, and discomfort. Where Ward’s satire was clever and political, Kricfalusi’s was primal, grotesque, and visceral. It was humor stripped of politeness, laughter that bit as it entertained. He sought not the applause of comparison, but the liberation of difference.

This conflict between tradition and innovation is as old as creation itself. The philosopher Plato distrusted the poets, fearing their power to reshape the world’s moral order; the poets, in turn, scorned his rigid philosophy. Michelangelo defied his patrons’ demands to paint beauty as they saw it, instead carving divine agony into marble. Kricfalusi, in his time, carried that same defiance — refusing to bow before the conventions of animation’s golden past, choosing instead to ignite a new age of surreal intensity. To love one’s craft, as he did, is to wrestle with its heritage — to honor it by rebelling against it.

In declaring that it was “a different style of humor,” Kricfalusi spoke of the evolution of the comic spirit itself. Humor is not a fixed language, but a living one — it grows, adapts, and mirrors the age that gives it voice. The irony and wit of Rocky and Bullwinkle belonged to the postwar era — an age of satire and subtle rebellion. Ren & Stimpy, on the other hand, was born of the 1990s — an age of noise, exaggeration, and sensory overload. Kricfalusi’s humor was not clever commentary; it was carnival chaos, reflecting a generation raised on contradiction. Where Ward’s laughter was sharp as a scalpel, Kricfalusi’s was wild as a thunderstorm.

His honesty, though harsh, reveals a greater wisdom: that every artist must defend the sanctity of their own vision. To imitate is easy, to evolve is sacred. The world often mistakes reverence for greatness, believing that to follow one’s heroes is the highest virtue. But Kricfalusi reminds us that true creation begins when reverence ends — when the artist dares to say, “I will not repeat what has been done.” This defiance is not arrogance; it is the divine restlessness that moves humanity forward. As Prometheus once stole fire from the gods, so too do creators steal new light from the old, kindling it into something fierce and unrecognizable.

Consider the tale of Pablo Picasso, who in his youth mastered the classical forms of painting, only to reject them utterly. “Learn the rules like a pro,” he said, “so you can break them like an artist.” The world scorned him at first, calling his distorted figures madness — yet it was in that madness that modern art was born. Kricfalusi, too, mastered the art of animation’s past, only to shatter its conventions and rebuild it in his own chaotic image. Both men proved that the artist’s duty is not obedience, but revelation. To preserve tradition without transformation is to let it die quietly in its frame.

So let this be the teaching drawn from John Kricfalusi’s passionate words:

1. Reject comparison, for every soul carries a voice that cannot be repeated.

2. Honor your influences, but never live within their shadow.

3. Embrace rebellion, for creation is the act of defiance against imitation.

4. Pursue your own humor, your own truth, for even laughter is a mirror of the age that shapes it.

Thus spoke John Kricfalusi, and through his defiance we hear the echo of every artist who ever dared to be misunderstood. His “different style of humor” is not just a matter of taste, but of philosophy — a belief that to create is to evolve, and to evolve is to risk rejection. So, O listener, remember this: the world will always try to name you by what it already knows. But the true creator, the true thinker, the true humorist — must always answer, “No, I am something else.” For only then does art, and life itself, continue to move forward into the light of the unknown.