2011-10-20
Original: 2011-10-20 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
TRANSCRIPT
Panel 1:
An elderly woman is being mugged at knifepoint by a bald, masked man in a tank top who grabs her purse. She cries out.
Elderly woman: HELP! HELP!
(A small bat-like silhouette is visible in the night sky in the upper right.)
Panel 2:
A caped superhero in a blue-and-red costume flies in from the upper right. The woman looks up at him.
Elderly woman: OH NO, IT'S... WAIT... YOU'RE NOT SUPERMAN.
Panel 3:
The hero crashes into the scene. A dark, grim-faced figure in a cape is shown amid the action.
Panel 4:
The hero flies away into the night cityscape, cape trailing, having dealt with the situation. The elderly woman watches.
Graph 1 (line chart):
Label: CRIME RATE WHILE CLARK KENT WAS "SUPERMAN"
Y-axis: (crime rate)
X-axis: TIME
The line stays roughly flat/steady across time.
Votey:
Graph 2 (line chart):
Label: CRIME RATE AFTER CLARK KENT BECAME DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE MAN
Y-axis: (crime rate)
X-axis: TIME
The line shows a sawtooth pattern: crime rate rises steadily, then sharply drops to near zero, then rises again and drops again, repeating in a jagged saw-toothed cycle.
Panel 1:
An elderly woman is being mugged at knifepoint by a bald, masked man in a tank top who grabs her purse. She cries out.
Elderly woman: HELP! HELP!
(A small bat-like silhouette is visible in the night sky in the upper right.)
Panel 2:
A caped superhero in a blue-and-red costume flies in from the upper right. The woman looks up at him.
Elderly woman: OH NO, IT'S... WAIT... YOU'RE NOT SUPERMAN.
Panel 3:
The hero crashes into the scene. A dark, grim-faced figure in a cape is shown amid the action.
Panel 4:
The hero flies away into the night cityscape, cape trailing, having dealt with the situation. The elderly woman watches.
Graph 1 (line chart):
Label: CRIME RATE WHILE CLARK KENT WAS "SUPERMAN"
Y-axis: (crime rate)
X-axis: TIME
The line stays roughly flat/steady across time.
Votey:
Graph 2 (line chart):
Label: CRIME RATE AFTER CLARK KENT BECAME DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE MAN
Y-axis: (crime rate)
X-axis: TIME
The line shows a sawtooth pattern: crime rate rises steadily, then sharply drops to near zero, then rises again and drops again, repeating in a jagged saw-toothed cycle.
Alt text
A SMBC comic. Panels 1-2: An elderly woman is mugged at knifepoint by a bald masked man grabbing her purse; she yells "HELP! HELP!" A caped superhero flies in and she says, "OH NO, IT'S... WAIT... YOU'RE NOT SUPERMAN." Panels 3-4: A dark, grim-faced caped hero crashes in, deals with the mugger, and flies off into the night city skyline. Below are two labeled line graphs of crime rate over time. The first, labeled "CRIME RATE WHILE CLARK KENT WAS 'SUPERMAN'," is a roughly flat steady line. The votey (second graph), labeled "CRIME RATE AFTER CLARK KENT BECAME DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE MAN," is a sawtooth pattern: crime climbs steadily, then plummets to near zero, then climbs and plummets again, repeating. The joke: this new, overly violent hero deters crime so harshly that it crashes after each crackdown, only to creep back up until the next disproportionate response.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.