Transcript
Two friends huddle in the wreckage of a modern-day city. The smoke is still heavy in the air.
Friend 1: What happened?
Friend 2: It must have been a bomb. Thank god we’re both okay.
Friend 2 holds up a first aid kit.
Friend 2: But I’m sure there’s a lot of injured people nearby. Let’s gather what food, clean water, and first aid supplies we can find and help them out.
Friend 1 is wearing a safety cone as a hat and holding a walking cane with a knife duct taped to it as a weapon.
Friend 1: This here’s my territory!
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This one is rather on the nose right now :(.
Unfortunately, it’s always on the nose because there are pretty much always countries being bombed.
I’m not sure it’s appropriate to deflect like this when someone voices a genuine concern about that timeliness and appropriateness of a joke/comic.
I would think you guys would be more inclined to take ownership of your actions.
Hey there, so on reflection, my initial comment did come off as more flippant than intended. Gimme a minute and I’ll post something more complete.
Ah, the good old “five minutes after the apocalypse half the population turn into tribal bandits” trope.
It often comes along with “we have hundreds of refugees that do nothing but lay around while the protagonists build defences or fix the generator”.
I would point you to that allegedly feminist trainwreck that Y: The Last Man is, but i don’t want to torture you all.
Hey folks, so a bit of context for today’s comic.
The script was written a while back, before Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. It feels a little weird to type this, but that only started 13 days ago. When it happened, we considered whether to pull this comic from the schedule, considering the horrible destruction happening because of that war.
After some discussion, we decided pulling the comic would be hypocritical on our part. While the war in Ukraine is dominating headlines and appears set to do so for the foreseeable future, such conflict didn’t just start 13 days ago. It has been going on continuously for decades in places like Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
This comic does not contain any reference to a specific conflict, or even a specific place beyond the characters speaking English. Perhaps it will be collectively decided at some point in the future that post-apocalyptic jokes are just in bad taste as a genre, but since that hasn’t happened, it doesn’t seem right or prudent to suspend them specifically over a European conflict.
This isn’t us claiming to be brave or anything, just explaining our reasons in a way that the comic didn’t have time for.
For my part, I didn’t mean my comment to be an objection to the comic’s presence.
No worries, Sunless, I didn’t read your original comment as hostile.
This is a fair position. It wouldn’t be right to give higher consideration for a European conflict just because the western world is talking about it right now.
Thanks for explaining.
(This was meant to be a reply to Oren’s explanation comment!)
Don’t worry, sometimes comment nesting can be tricky.
Especially if you scroll using your left thumb, like I do. I wind up unintentionally opening the reply box at a random comment on nearly every article I read on this site. :)
I see this as lambasting The Walking Dead and the rest of American post-apocalyptic media.
I was on the ground during the devastating earthquake of the Croatian Banija region in 2020 and the entire country responded in the manner of the character on the right.
Celebrity chefs showed up to man the kitchens, tens of thousands of regular folk would come to lend a hand, camps from all over the nations drove their RVs there so the people whose homes were destroyed could have a place to sleep.
There were no reports of looting, fighting, robbery, anything like that. Just a whole nation mourning a tragedy and doing whatever they can to help.
This whole “when bad stuff happens, grab a weapon and stand your ground” is a uniquely American way of thinking, the entire rest of the world seems to be running on the opposite metric.
Mayhaps, it’s the metric system! ;-)
Americans actually tend to do the same thing in real life, at least in short term disasters. Long term ones are harder to judge.
I think most people everywhere tend to do that in real life.
Long term, there might be the building of groups who claim an area to use the resources for themselves, I think, but short term, humans stand together to help each other.
Thank god someone mentioned the Walking Dead. I’m watching it right now, and am on the second season. Besides the whole problems with how they’re handling Lori’s pregnancy, violence is presented as the right thing to do. If you aren’t willing to make the ‘hard’ choices, then you are considered ‘weak’. (The specific conflict is when they have to decide whether to shoot a teenage boy or not.) In reality, negotiation is much harder than just shooting around.
This type of cynicism makes the show seem immature. I mean, most humans WANT to live in an environment where people treat each other well. They don’t want to hurt others. That’s literally why we have justice systems. Most people won’t go all evil and bloodthirsty.
As to this being an american way of thinking, I disagree. There’s always some people that are hostile, but despite how we think of an apocalyptic world in media, people tend to help each other. We’re herd animals.
Honestly how eurocentric is that commentee that they think a broadstrokes “bad thing people go caveman” comic is referring to a real life war? Post apocalyptic humor is necessary in a world lurching toward the actual worst case scenario regarding the environment and humanity. Your reply was respectful Oren but honesty they are undeserving of a good faith rebuttal because I feel their accusations are baseless and ridiculous. I laughed out loud on the subway train at the comic when I opened it a few minutes ago. Please you and the Author know that this is a concise and clever series of cartoons that I very much look forward to
Damn, that really nails the cliche plot to the page.