Hi GoComics readers,
Many of you have expressed curiosity and even concern about the comic hiatus for Pat Oliphant's drawings. We wanted to share that Pat is doing well, in good health, but simply on vacation. As soon as when we have an update on the date of his next drawing, we'll share the news here and via social media.
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Called "the most influential cartoonist now working" by The New York Times, Pat Oliphant occupies a unique position among today’s editorial cartoonists: Widely considered the dean of the profession, he is one of its sharpest, most daring practitioners.
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Godfreydaniel said, 11 months ago
I wonder if Assad and Putin will be sent to the same circle of the Inferno…….
ahab
said, 11 months ago
Stalin would be proud.
emptc12 said, 11 months ago
@Godfreydaniel
Thinking obliquely as usual, I wonder if anyone with such power fears punishment in the afterlife. I would certainly guess not.
Dante’s conception might have frightened people of his time, maybe because it so dared to describe historical figures and their punishments. Historical and biblical figures were very much alive in the popular imagination at that time. Did Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot or other famous slaughterers think of themselves as hell-bound? Do we think of them in Hell, after the relatively short time since they reigned? Their bad examples surely haven’t stopped the floods of blood. Oh, well, just another vicious mass-murderer.
By now, the conception of Inferno is a medieval literary curiosity with its dated accompanying illustrations. We know the Earth is definitely not hollow, that geology and physics would not support such a structure. Even the later Dore illustrations are now more funky than frightening.I’ve often thought that a big-budget anime should be done of the Inferno. A freebie to any prospective film-maker: at the Vestibule, a deafening cacophony of instruments in synthesizer-sampled groans and screams should be heard, each separate sound falling away as one approaches Satan at the center, there an eerie silence in which can be heard his bloody munching of Brutus, Judas, and Cassius. Would someone doing that have the courage to show modern political figures in the place of those old traitors?Larry Niven wrote two books with a modern conception of Hell. They’re a curious conglomerate of ancient and modern thinking, entertaining but not frightening – a kind of Infernoland theme park. Hell should be terrifying, enough so that it puts off people from sinning, or at least gives them great satisfaction for their sustained effort to be good in their certainty of the sure and proper punishment of those who were bad. It had been church and secular rulers’ instrument to retain power, but that is surely falling away quickly if not completely gone. I’m afraid that most people think today that Hell is a place where their enemies will dwell, never their families or friends.
Even the fact that I’m discussing this so urbanely while people are being massacred is sad. Is there a sin that relates to that casual detachment? But … but … it happens every few years – hundreds of millions in the last century. Maybe if we smelled the stench of it all or saw the mountains of bones it would seem real. If every gory murder that entertains us on the movie screen involved an actual splashing of blood and viscera on the audience, if random people had their bones broken…
Well, anyway — Have a nice day.
Godfreydaniel said, 11 months ago
@emptc12
I’ve read the Inferno maybe 15 times in my life (whereas the Purgatorio and Paradiso only twice each, which may say something about me……) And Larry Niven’s and Jerry Pournelle’s two Inferno books are favorites of mine. I should point out that there’s a great line in the first book, one of the damned sinners referring to God: “We’re in the hands of ultimate power and ultimate sadism.” And I wrote a parody of a hard-boiled detective taking the Inferno tour (which I really need to revise someday and see if I can get the damn thing maybe published………)
DrCanuck said, 11 months ago
I wonder why Satan would torture those who supported him in his war on God. You’d think he would think kindly of his followers.
Or is an evil God doing the torturing?
lookinside said, 11 months ago
@DrCanuck
I’m betting Hell is more fun than heaven.
emptc12 said, 11 months ago
@Godfreydaniel
I read Inferno many times, Purgatorio several, Paradisio only once. Inferno is the most entertaining, I think most people would agree. What that means, I don’t know. Yeah I do – Paradisio is boring.
I’m curious what translations you read. I read the Dorothy L. Sayers / Barbara Reynolds and also John Ciardi versions. Or did you read them in the original? If so, my hat is off to you.
I also started a parody of these, in which OSHA got wind of unsafe conditions down there in Hell and started demanding all kinds of environmental and work changes. Satan was not amused.
I recently read in Angelus Silesius, THE DEVIL IS GOOD:
“In essence, the Devil is as good as you: what is it that he lacks?
Peace and extinguished will.”
emptc12 said, 11 months ago
@DrCanuck
I clipped a “Mr. Boffo” cartoon years ago and put it in my copy of THE DIVINE COMEDY:
The scene is in Hell. As Satan and a demonic minion look on, two brutish-looking men have popped into existence before them. The men are grinning, and one exclaims to the other, “We made it!”
The caption to the cartoon is “Management Material.”
Spamgaard said, 11 months ago
@DrCanuck
Remember, history (or fable) is written by the winners. The only documentary “evidence” of Satan’s evil-doing is in a book dedicated to the pagan war-god Yahweh, and that thing is a slaughterfest of murdering men, women, children, razing villages, slavery, incest, you name it… all motivated by Yahweh. Heck, he killed a bunch of slaves, livestock and children of his greatest worshiper (Job) just to prove to Satan that Job was a stand-up guy and would still worship him. And this Satan guy is evil?
dtroutma
said, 11 months ago
’toon: odd how much marketing of used Russian weapons, like “Hinds”, is through Israeli Defense Industries.
HectorGonzalez said, 11 months ago
Love the Divine Comedy discussions. My favorite line from Niven & P’s ‘Inferno’ is something to the effect that
“Hell is God’s last attempt to get your attention.”
HectorGonzalez said, 11 months ago
@Godfreydaniel
I’d read that book.
emptc12 said, 11 months ago
A premise of the Niven/ Pournelle books is that each damned soul has the opportunity to leave Hell: No more “damned for all eternity,” Free Will still operates. When did such metaphysical flexibility begin to come about? Will Hell eventually be empty? Can even Satan be re-habilitated?
When George Burns and Morgan Freeman portray God as kinder, gentler, ironically humorous, and even sarcastic, you must figure blasphemy is passé. God is the rich bachelor uncle rather than Lord of Creation.
How has Satan gradually become less the implacable Adversary, more a Syndicate bully? It’s said that Milton’s Satan is the most interesting character in PARADISE LOST, even sympathetic. Mephistopheles in the various Faust works can be tricked. And here we are today with the Hell-Raiser movies, and Hell Boy, the cute little cartoon character Hot Stuff, and a Satan worshipper running for congress.
The modern Universe is so big that nothing we can conceive of could possibly have dominion over it all? So even the concepts of a regional franchise God and Devil are discarded?
So what is Evil, what is Good? In this age, is Evil the deprivation of human rights and life up to the ultimate, mass murder? Is Good happiness in comfortable possession of material goods and interesting hobbies? Do we so depend on human laws to combat evil and apportion punishment; so that if the person isn’t caught and punished, that’s the end? It seems that so many political and business types operate as if they don’t fear the afterlife, that’s for sure
I always thought Evil, once you started to side with it, was the ultimate Unfairness in the afterlife, with no reprieve; while Good in the afterlife was painfully achieved but the ultimate Gratitude and Satisfaction. Now, everything stops with personal death. What is after death, nothing (at most, “violet light and a hum”)? Or reincarnation? Or, most terribly, continued exploitation (conf. Joe Haldeman and Harlan Ellison stories).
Hey, Inquisitor, just tossing philosophical Frisbees in the playground of my mind (conf. Niven). Don’t shoot them for skeet.
Godfreydaniel said, 11 months ago
@emptc12
Considering that Benito Mussolini DOES escape from Hell in the Niven/Pournelle version, it’s hard to think of who might not be able to. (Dante put Brutus and Cassius with Judas right between Lucifer’s fangs as the three worst sinners of all, but c’mon, Julius Caesar slaughtered tons of Gauls when they weren’t looking, and it wasn’t exactly in self-defense…….) It’s very hard to escape from Hell, of course, but most sinners don’t even try, accepting their fate because deep down they think they deserve it. In my parody I put in a lot of modern people, from the obvious like Hitler, Mao, and Stalin, to Nixon and Ferdinand Marcos. Also people like Ken DeLay of Enron infamy, and more than one televangelist. (And Dr. Seuss’s first wife in the Wood of the Suicides, primarily for the shock value…………) I could actually accept a “regional” God (and Heaven and Hell) to some extent. (Let’s say each galaxy gets its own?) But then there’s that pesky multi-verse to consider………..
DrCanuck said, 11 months ago
@Spamgaard
(nurf nurf)
The Book of Job is so interesting. Supposedly, Satan is thrown out of Heaven and imprisoned at the beginning, yet much later in Job there he is, back in heaven, chatting with God and laying friendly bets.
They oughta get their stories straight.