With really inconvenient timing, my right shoulder went “screw you Deutsch, I’m outta here!” when I was just a few days away from finishing, and drawing became impossible. This has happened before, but rarely at such a unfortunate moment – I had this cartoon 90% drawn, but I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d be able to finish before my self-imposed end of month deadline.
(The 10% not yet done was the shading and highlighting, aka “the fun part.”)
Fortunately, my shoulder eventually got better, and here we are.
The seed of this cartoon came a few years ago. I was watching a video about the old “no watch without a watchmaker” argument and imagined it pictured as two friends debating as they walked past a gigantic half-buried pocket watch.
I liked the image and wanted to draw it. And I liked the idea of doing a cartoon on this subject – it’s something I find fun to think about, and also a departure from the usual partisan arguments. So I began writing a cartoon to incorporate that image, and ran into a problem: It was going to be HUGE. I wrote draft after draft, and finally had to admit that I couldn’t fit in all the arguments I wanted to include.
For instance, here’s a few panels that wound up on the cutting room floor:
Even after multiple iterations of cutting the script, the strip was still going to be much larger than my usual cartoons. Which is fine – I really like doing bigger comics now and then, and I know some readers enjoy the giant strips too.
But that brought up a new problem: how to fit this in my drawing schedule?
So I laid it out, and it sat on the back burner for years. Then, a few months ago, I began drawing it for real, doing a couple of hours on it here and there between working on other cartoons.
This month, I decided it was far enough along that I could get it finished. And the drawing seemed to be going well – I even found a color scheme that I liked the look of. Plus, I was enjoying doing a strip in which the two debaters actually seem to like one another.
And just then my shoulder went on strike. Aaaargh. (And, also, ouch.)
And one enormous, weird comic strip later, here we are! I hope you all enjoy this break from our usual programming.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
PANEL 1
Two men are talking on a sidewalk. One has brown hair and a mustache, and looks smugly confident. The younger man has curly blond hair and wears a T-shirt.
MUSTACHE: I know a question no atheist can answer!
BLOND: What is it? My cousin Edna over there’s an atheist — I’ll try it on her!
PANEL 2
The blond man walks toward a woman sitting on a park bench.
BLOND: Hi Edna! I’ve got a question no atheist can answer!
EDNA: Sounds like fun. Hit me!
PANEL 3
Close-up of the blond man, gesturing enthusiastically.
BLOND: Imagine you’re walking when you notice a watch half-buried in the path.
PANEL 4
A large panel showing the blond man and Edna walking and talking. Behind them is an enormous, partially buried pocket watch. The characters appear several times as their conversation progresses.
BLOND: You’d know there must be a watchmaker, right? It’s too complex to exist unless someone made it.
BLOND: But the universe is much more complex than a watch. So it has to have a creator. Which proves God exists! Checkmate, atheist!
EDNA: I see your point… But if complex things can’t exist without a creator, then who created God?
BLOND: No one “created” God. God just exists.
EDNA: But if God “just exists,” then complex things can exist without an intelligent creator.
PANEL 5
Edna gestures as she talks.
EDNA: Now let me ask you one! What’s the point of “killer questions” to prove God exists?
PANEL 6
A giant hand emerges from the clouds, offering a book to two scientists. The book is entitled “PROOF by Me, God.”
EDNA (off-panel): If God exists, he could easily prove it, right?
PANEL 7
A wide-eyed man talks to a skeptical woman in a park. God, portrayed as a gigantic man with a long white beard, hides behind a tree, giggling.
EDNA (off-panel): But he hasn’t. So either he doesn’t exist, or he wants to remain unproven.
MAN: But he was just here!
GOD: Hee hee.
PANEL 8
Edna continues speaking as she and the blond man walk.
EDNA: So by trying to “prove” God exists, could you be going against God’s wishes?
PANEL 9
The blond man stands still, looking stunned, with one hand against his face, as Edna continues walking.
BLOND: Um…
PANEL 10
The blond man, waving his arms enthusiastically and grinning, has returned to his mustached friend.
MUSTACHE: What did she say?
BLOND: She was totally stumped!
KICKER CAPTION BELOW THE COMIC
Barry the cartoonist, looking very conceited, talks to the reader.
BARRY: People have asked variants of the watch question since Cicero in 45 B.C. But now I’ve drawn a cartoon, so the question is settled forever!
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
Panel 1: A discarded piece of paper on the sidewalk reads “Litter Bugs R Among Us.”
Panel 2: A wanted poster is nailed to a tree. A building in the background is a giant robot. Another building is made of giant Lego blocks.
Panel 3: A building in the background has rows of windows with people whose heads are shaped like Os and Xs, in a tic-tac-toe game formation. Another building has a skier zooming down the sloped roof.
Panel 4: A cave in the background has a mailbox reading “Plato,” and a shadow figure is visible inside, recalling Plato’s allegory of the cave. Two little anthropomorphic rodents wearing fancy Victorian clothes walk together in the foreground. A realistic bird with a Disneyesque cartoon duck head flies overhead.
Panel 5: An evil bunny smoking a cig is on the grass.
Panel 6: The two scientists are drawn with eggs for heads; a caption labels them “egghead scientists.”
Panel 8: One of the trees has an arm sticking up out of the ground instead of a trunk.
Panel 9: A building is topped by a gigantic birthday cake.
Panel 10: A turtle wearing glasses is walking on the sidewalk.
EDNA’S TATTOOS: Over the course of the strip, Edna has a tattoo of a triangle on her left arm, and a tattoo of an oval on her right arm. The oval turns into a stick figure with an oval head, waving at us. Then, looking serious, Oval holds up a sign saying “beware of Triangle Head.” Then we see a triangle-head stick figure holding a gun. Then, as Oval looks the other way, a gun is pointed at the back of Oval’s head. Finally, we see a gravestone with a picture of Oval on it.
BLOND MAN’S T-SHIRT: Over the course of the strip, the blond man’s T-shirt displays a disagreement about burger joints. “Eat at Joe’s”; “Joe’s? Nah Jo’s food is better”; “Jo’s not better you liar!”; “Joe’s a total hack!”; “You take that back!”; “Joe’s burgers taste like dust.”; “Yes, but yummy dust!”
I’ve never voted Republican in my life. But don’t demand my vote if you’re not gonna listen to me or…