paradise
Original: paradise on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Person (off-panel speech bubble): God, is heaven real?
God: Look, it's a mess up here, man.
Panel 2:
God: You just TRY designing a paradise for the just. It sucks! I had a rule that whoever does the most good gets to heaven. Know what happened? A bunch of billionaires who started philanthropies got golden tickets.
Panel 3:
God: But they're all dickheads! Meantime, I got a guy over here who was poor his whole life but gave everything he could to a local charity. What do I do with this dude?
Panel 4:
God: Then you got probability! Suppose you got a guy who eats babies, but the baby was gonna be a genocidal maniac. This has happened 428 times so far, so I got a freakin' legion of baby-eaters with harps and tiny angel wings!
Panel 5:
God: The cherubs are FREAKED OUT.
Panel 6:
God: Then you gotta decide if lives on balance are positive. If living to adulthood is negative, guess who needs a good damning? EVERY HEALTHCARE WORKER.
Panel 7:
Person: Sounds stressful.
God (off-panel): It's hell up here!
Votey:
(A picture frame hangs on a wall. Inside the frame is a drawing of a fish.)
Text below the frame, handwritten: Nahhh
Person (off-panel speech bubble): God, is heaven real?
God: Look, it's a mess up here, man.
Panel 2:
God: You just TRY designing a paradise for the just. It sucks! I had a rule that whoever does the most good gets to heaven. Know what happened? A bunch of billionaires who started philanthropies got golden tickets.
Panel 3:
God: But they're all dickheads! Meantime, I got a guy over here who was poor his whole life but gave everything he could to a local charity. What do I do with this dude?
Panel 4:
God: Then you got probability! Suppose you got a guy who eats babies, but the baby was gonna be a genocidal maniac. This has happened 428 times so far, so I got a freakin' legion of baby-eaters with harps and tiny angel wings!
Panel 5:
God: The cherubs are FREAKED OUT.
Panel 6:
God: Then you gotta decide if lives on balance are positive. If living to adulthood is negative, guess who needs a good damning? EVERY HEALTHCARE WORKER.
Panel 7:
Person: Sounds stressful.
God (off-panel): It's hell up here!
Votey:
(A picture frame hangs on a wall. Inside the frame is a drawing of a fish.)
Text below the frame, handwritten: Nahhh
Alt text
A seven-panel comic. A person asks an unseen God whether heaven is real, and God (a man with dark hair, shown in profile) launches into an exasperated rant about how hard heaven is to administrate. God explains he made a rule that whoever does the most good gets to heaven, but billionaires with philanthropies gamed it and got golden tickets while a genuinely poor, generous man is now a puzzle. He describes probability problems: 428 times someone ate a baby who was destined to become a genocidal maniac, leaving him with a 'freakin' legion of baby-eaters with harps and tiny angel wings,' which has the cherubs freaked out. He notes that if living to adulthood counts as negative on balance, then 'every healthcare worker' deserves damnation. The person replies, 'Sounds stressful,' and God answers from off-panel, 'It's hell up here!' Votey: a framed picture of a fish hanging on a wall, captioned in handwriting 'Nahhh.'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.