Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 04/04/01

Artist's Statement

This cartoon is one of several inspired by some nonsensical phrase that popped into my head out of nowhere and would not stop running through it. This is where "Baby Wants Some Applesauce" came from, too. Often these phrases appear when I am in the shower, for some reason. In this case it was a voice that sounded like his guy's face looks, howling, "...and I ate it ANYWAY!" The new one that's been stuck in there lately is, "Why Do They Kill Me?", which often presents itself, irritatingly, in musical form. So far, however, no appropriate cartoon to accompany this phrase has suggested itself. Watch for one in upcoming weeks.

Technical note: This drawing is a classic example of my main problem as an artist, (and arguably as a human being), which is that I am lazy and impatient and never plan ahead. Basically, the funniest part of this cartoon (and the only interesting part to draw) was the face of the guy telling the story and those of his horrified listeners. So I drew all of the faces first, just floating there disembodied on blank paper. Then of course I lost interest and carried the drawing around in my folder for about a month and a half, until last week, when a City Paper deadline hove into view and I had no other ideas. So I dug this out of the file and hastily tried to fill in all the boring parts--the people's bodies, the coffee table, the background, etc.--only to discover that it was impossible to fit the bodies in any kind of natural human positions under the faces as I'd haphazardly placed them. (A good cartoonist, you see, would've penciled in the whole cartoon first to make sure he'd gotten the composition right and then, only when it was perfect, inked over it, but I am far too lazy for that sort of plodding, laborious nonsense.) So with very little time to go--like twenty minutes--I ended up frantically fudging everything, cutting out characters and pasting them back in an inch to the right, throwing a napkin over the lap of the guy on the far right to hide the fact that his knees couldn't possibly fit underneath the table, etc. I even forgot to color in the anecdotist's tie in the CP version. You should see what a mess the original is--cut and pasted, crusted with yellowing white-out. Just another fascinating glimpse behind the scenes here at The Pain--When Will It End?