Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 08/22/01

Artist's Statement

This is one of my few cartoons that's neither stolen from one of my funnier friends nor inspired by any real-life humiliations or grudges. I just thought it up while walking down Mass Ave in Boston last week, when I saw one of those diamond-shaped yellow signs at a construction site, and it naturally occurred to me to try to draw one of them cautioning against some bizarre, horrific, and difficult-to-visually-interpret hazard, depicted, of course, in crude block drawings. Other possibilities considered included: 1.) a falling safe, 2.) a swinging razor-sharp pendlum, 3.) a guy with an axe chopping off another guy's head, or 4.) a more complicated scenario with two guys holding the arms and feet of a victim as he was cut in half by a fourth figure with a chain saw, which in the end proved to be too difficult to depict with stick men.

Ben Walker, who I was visiting at the time, and whose undiplomatic criticisms of my work have have been frequently cited here, told me he liked it a lot, calling it "a very Tim cartoon." When I asked him what he meant by that, he said, "It's all you, straight out of your imagination, and it's about absurd, irrational fear." I am interpreting this, charitably, as a backhanded compliment.


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