Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Poor Unfortunate Souls

Back in the central ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, the realm of suicides and spendthrifts, Chip Dunham's condemned pirates drag out their weary existence. In today's strip, we see Captain Crow and a nameless Green Ship pirate indulging in one of the most common activities of the damned: the attempt to complete a task designed to continue for all eternity. The two pirates are ostensibly setting up for a duel, but they have apparently neglected to specify how many steps they must take before they begin. As they are trapped in a fiery underworld, it is probable that the instructions issued to them at the beginning of the duel were, "Take infinity paces, then turn."*

There are several clues--besides the unusually large number of paces involved--that this duel is not an ordinary one. The combatants are not, as is more common, progressing in opposite directions, but are instead wandering along the shoreline, each at a ninety-degree angle to the other. One might posit that they are attempting to remain close to potential drinking water as they take their infinity steps, though the fact that the water is probably salt kind of destroys that theory. However, it is worth noting that the body of water in question is so badly drawn that it actually looks a bit like the maw of a ravening monster. Might we, in fact, be seeing an example of the Hellmouth here? The pirates are unable to tear themselves away from it because they know that it will eventually swallow their tormented souls forever.**

It is also worth noting that the pirates have clearly not taken nearly eight hundred steps each. Are they trying to cheat their way to infinity?*** I can hardly blame them, but I can't help but feel it's a good thing the demon Louie is not here to witness the duel. If he were, there would likely be blood and mangled limbs.****

Overboard is a courageous comic that graphically depicts the author's personal view of Hell. May it long continue.*****

*Interestingly, my marking instructions are generally, "Mark infinity essays, then go mad." Coincidence? I think not.

**Alas.

***And beyond?

****Mangled soul limbs.

*****I am drearily certain that it will.

6 comments:

Brian said...

Maybe the cartoonist was trying to go for a sort of fisheye-lens effect? Unlikely, I realize, but it was the first thing that I thought of.

I miss being able to click and get the magnified version. The writing is so narrow that it's hard to read without the enlargement.

Angry Kem said...

Huh...that's weird. Why doesn't the clicking work? There definitely IS a bigger version (not much bigger, but it's readable). Did Blogger change stuff without telling us? Does anyone know how to fix this? It's really, really annoying. There's no way I can make the font bigger, either. Damn it, Blogger!

(The clicking works on everything posted before May 15, so if there's been a change, it's a very recent one.)

Angry Kem said...

Well, there are other Blogger blogs with clickable images. Why aren't mine clickable any more? I read somewhere that one can only post a certain number of images on a Blogger blog. Have I reached some sort of infernal limit? What the hell? This is stupid. I hereby proclaim the stupidity of this situation!

I'm tempted to migrate to Wordpress, but I'm not sure how to do so (I know there's a way to move the content of a Blogger blog over there. I just don't know what that way is. Plus I hate changing addresses and confusing the hell out of people and disrupting all the links. DAMN IT, BLOGGER!).

Angry Kem said...

Okay...I've fixed the problem in an incredibly stupid way and am about to go fix it in several of the previous posts as well.

Guess what was wrong?

The unclickable comics were edited in Explorer and not Firefox. That's right, folks: Blogger will not upload clickable images in Explorer. What the hell? What the swiving hell? DAMN IT, DAMN IT, DAMN IT, BLOGGER!

Brian said...

I do thank you for beating your head against this little problem. If you need to clean any blood off of the brick wall, you can borrow my handkerchief.

(I myself am currently dealing with rendering issues that only happen in IE. Take heart; we are by no means alone.)

Angry Kem said...

Well, thanks for bringing the problem to my attention. I hadn't even noticed the stupidity happening.

Grumble grumble idiotic Explorer grumble grumble grumble...