Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 7/21/04
Artist's Statement
I'm crazy about this cartoon. It seems to me
like exactly the right mix of incisive political commentary and pure insanity.
It feels like it's been a long time since I drew a cartoon that made me feel
like a genius, so this makes me very happy.
It does seem as if, at long fucking last, the Left has fihnally learned to
copy the one simple tactic that comes so naturally to the Right: fight dirty.
Take the offense. Keep up a relentless propaganda campaign. Use smear tactics,
rumor, and innuendo. Lie. It's too bad, I guess, but if it's the only way
to get Bush out of office I don't care if someone photoshops pictures of him
in bed with a dead eight-year-old boy and a Persian cat on a leash. Just as
long as that hateful little zero is back in Crawford weeping and cursing and
slapping Laura around and drinking himself into a bitter drooling stupor on
a nightly basis next January.
My friend Chris and I, depicted blowing up the adoption clinic, are both adopted.
This makes it okay that we are killing all those orphans.
Oh, how I hope my friend Megan does not hate the drawing of her in panel 2!
Please do not hate it, Megan. Megan's is one of my favorite faces on Earth
but she's had some issues with how she's been depicted in my cartoons before,
so I'm always skittish about including her. I realized too late that I did
not really know how to draw her making the exasperated eye-rolling expression
required here, but I'd already written the diaglogue specifically with her
in mind (she once defeated Erik Sunday in a debate about Spider-Man with the
withering rejoinder: I'm so sure"), so I just had to forge ahead and
do my best. I am sorry if it sucks.
The Biblical verses on Jim's sign are legit; they're all about how the rich
are damned. Matthew
6:19-24 and 19:21-24;
Mark
10:21-24 and 11:15-18;
Luke
12:15-21, 16:13-14,
16:19-26,
and 18:23-27.
These were just the first smattering I came across when I leafed through my
Bible, but there are plenty more like them. I ran out of space before I could
even get to John. Check 'em out for yourself. You don't hear televangelists
or pious politicians talk about this much, but Jesus Christ said it in plain
words: you're rich, you go to hell. Period. I myself am rich but luckily I
am also an atheist! Tee hee hee!
I wanted to include Erik Sunday, lead singer of National
Razor, in the last panel, since it is he and his wife Lisa and my friend
Dave who are actually planning to purchase a plot of land at a remote, undisclosed
location somewhere in West Virginia, to be called Mount Apocalypse. I will
not be invited to join them as my skills will be worse than useless in the
brutal and mutant-ridden post-apocalyptic environment. Unfortunately Erik
turned out to be even harder to draw than Megan so he doesn't get to live
in my post-apocalyptic compound.
If Lisa from Nashville is reading this, hi Lisa.