suffering-3
Original: suffering-3 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Man (with reddish hair, looking up): God, why do bad people prosper while the good suffer?
God (voice from above, in a speech bubble): Convection.
Panel 2:
God: Some people are really good in past lives, so they get rewarded in the next life with wealth and status.
Panel 3:
God: Most people, given wealth and status, become absolute turbo-bastards, so when they die the soul drops back down.
Panel 4:
God: It's cyclical, and I can use the movement to spin a wheel, generate power, and operate my toaster oven in the great beyond.
Panel 5 (wide panel, tiny figure of the man standing at left looking up at a vast dark expanse):
Man: What's the ethical theory underpinning all this?
Panel 6:
Man (seated, hands clasped): [no dialogue]
God: If it goes fast enough, I can make cheese-toast.
Votey:
God (large speech bubble): Stop mentally fornicating! You're nowhere near the top!
(Below, a small drawing of a person's head/hair facing downward.)
Man (with reddish hair, looking up): God, why do bad people prosper while the good suffer?
God (voice from above, in a speech bubble): Convection.
Panel 2:
God: Some people are really good in past lives, so they get rewarded in the next life with wealth and status.
Panel 3:
God: Most people, given wealth and status, become absolute turbo-bastards, so when they die the soul drops back down.
Panel 4:
God: It's cyclical, and I can use the movement to spin a wheel, generate power, and operate my toaster oven in the great beyond.
Panel 5 (wide panel, tiny figure of the man standing at left looking up at a vast dark expanse):
Man: What's the ethical theory underpinning all this?
Panel 6:
Man (seated, hands clasped): [no dialogue]
God: If it goes fast enough, I can make cheese-toast.
Votey:
God (large speech bubble): Stop mentally fornicating! You're nowhere near the top!
(Below, a small drawing of a person's head/hair facing downward.)
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic. A man with reddish hair looks up to the heavens and asks God, "Why do bad people prosper while the good suffer?" God answers, "Convection." God explains the cosmic mechanics: people who are good in past lives are reborn into wealth and status; most people given wealth and status "become absolute turbo-bastards," so when they die their souls "drop back down." God says this cycle is useful: "It's cyclical, and I can use the movement to spin a wheel, generate power, and operate my toaster oven in the great beyond." A wide panel shows the tiny man standing alone in a vast dark void as he asks, "What's the ethical theory underpinning all this?" In the final panel the man sits with hands clasped while God replies, "If it goes fast enough, I can make cheese-toast." The joke: God's elaborate karmic system of reward and punishment exists not for justice but as a convection engine to power a divine toaster oven. Votey (aftercomic): a large speech bubble from God reads, "Stop mentally fornicating! You're nowhere near the top!" with a small drawing of a person's head below, suggesting God is chiding the man for getting ahead of himself.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.