Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 08/22/01
Artist's Statement
This is one of my few cartoons that's
neither stolen from one of my funnier friends nor inspired by any real-life
humiliations or grudges. I just thought it up while walking down Mass Ave
in Boston last week, when I saw one of those diamond-shaped yellow signs at
a construction site, and it naturally occurred to me to try to draw one of
them cautioning against some bizarre, horrific, and difficult-to-visually-interpret
hazard, depicted, of course, in crude block drawings. Other possibilities
considered included: 1.) a falling safe, 2.) a swinging razor-sharp pendlum,
3.) a guy with an axe chopping off another guy's head, or 4.) a more complicated
scenario with two guys holding the arms and feet of a victim as he was cut
in half by a fourth figure with a chain saw, which in the end proved to be
too difficult to depict with stick men.
Ben Walker, who I was visiting at the time, and whose undiplomatic criticisms
of my work have have been frequently cited here, told me he liked it a lot,
calling it "a very Tim cartoon." When I asked him what he meant
by that, he said, "It's all you, straight out of your imagination, and
it's about absurd, irrational fear." I am interpreting this, charitably,
as a backhanded compliment.