Answers to Last Week’s Cartoon “My life is my message.” - GANDHI “Who I am underneath doesn’t matter. It’s what I do that defines me.” -BATMAN “To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” -GANDHI “No one tries too hard to make the world better. You can never shout too loudly in the name of freedom.” -BATMAN “Fear has its use but cowardice has none.” -GANDHI “In the end, veracity and rectitude always triumph.” -BATMAN “I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.”  -GANDHI "I'd rather die than beg for such a small favor as my life.” -BATMAN “Few men die of threats.” -GANDHI “Death is powerless against you if you leave a legacy of good behind. Death is powerless against you if you do your job.” -BATMAN “I chose this life. I know what I'm doing. And on any given day, I could stop doing it. Today, however, isn't that day. And tomorrow won't be either." -BATMAN "Saying yes to anyone in authority, anyone with a badge, just like your parents taught you. My parents taught me… that the world only makes sense when you force it to." -BATMAN “A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.” -GANDHI “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” -GANDHI “It isn’t exactly a normal world, is it?” -BATMAN

 

"An Allegory" (February 1, 2012)

 

Artist's Statement

I am at my Undisclosed Location this week, visiting family and dealing with gut-clenching stress over some issues with my publisher. I'm away from the complex apparatus I use to scan in new cartoons and so you must content yourselves with this little gem from my "sketchbook" (which is what let's call all the folders and piles of old pieces of typing paper on which I've doodled silly things). But let us not regard this as a mere throwaway or place-holder. No--this is one of the stupidest and most brilliant things I have ever drawn. It encompasses the whole of life. Everything can be understood in terms of it, as with Moby-Dick or Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. For the last few days I have been able to see only the bird, harbinger of my own extinction, instead of concentrating on the delights more immediately at hand. O yais, yais! Hyuk, hyeaugh, hyaw! Anyone who writes me a didactic email about tits and manmmals gets treated to a little chin music, gratis.

 

I am not a little bunny rabbit.

Pain News Do I have any readers in Iceland? I ask because I may be spending a few weeks in Reykjavik in March or April, and it would be nice to know some people there. I have finished my book of essays, We Learn Nothing, for Free Press at Simon & Schuster. It is scheduled for publication in June 2012. My latest collection of cartoons, Twilight of the Assholes, remains available for order at Fantagraphics Books. It includes all my best political cartoons and essays from Term II of the Bush administration. It is a mere $28.99, money you know very well you'll otherwise just spend on booze. For more information, see our new FAQs page.