Later issues reached a better balance of the two extremes. Genital Ben is sort of like a walking embodiment of the disgusting perversions buried in all of us. He disturbs me, and then makes me laugh which disturbs me even more. God, you really are a sadist. Again, it's nothing personal.
Satire is a very effective tool in exposing truths about society.
Readers may not take my observations seriously, but that doesn't mean they aren't absorbing the crux of my message on a deeper, unconscious level. Both suggest something inhuman, but they are subtly different. In fact, were we to ever meet Buster's dad, he might look and behave a lot like Rusty's. Actually, while that's as good an assessment as any, I often don't realize the larger truth of what I'm doing until much later. Well, Dave and I don't really talk, to be perfectly honest.