Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 7/31/02

Artist's Statement

All credit (such as it is) for this cartoon goes to Dave Israel and Boyd White. It was Dave who coined the aphorism, "You don't have to have a master plan to be evil," a few weeks ago, and I filed it away for plagiarism but hadn't come up with a good illustration for it yet. Then last night, while the three of us, all horribly hung over, were driving back from seeing the restored print of Metropolis at the Kennedy Center, Boyd proposed that I draw a cartoon titled something like "Behind the Scenes at the Laboratory" and show a hand drawing aside a curtain, in the manner of old paintings, to reveal none other than H.G. Wells in a lab, setting fire to a monkey's ass. ("H.G. Wells would never, ever do that," I argued feebly. "He wasn't even a scientist!") I admitted that the idea was hilarious but felt it was just too deranged to make sense to anyone other than those of us who had just seen Metropolis horribly hung over. It wasn't until this morning that Dave e-mailed me with the brilliant synthesis of the two ideas--that the drawing of the scientists setting the monkey's ass on fire perfectly illustrated the caption he'd come up with. After that, it pretty much drew itself. The dwarfish humpbacked assistant clapping with glee is my only real contribtution, the coup de grace.

Obviously I've abandoned my noble project of doing only political cartoons from now on. Sorry, everyone. But, frankly, what is there to say these days? The president is an unelected dimwit fronting for the same gang of callous, greedy, brutal old men who've been trying to run things without meddling by the voters since Vietnam. Corporations maximize their profits by any corrupt and duplicitous means necessary, fuck over their employees without conscience, and cover their asses. This is news?


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