264. Hellscape



You know the secret to having a successful webcomic? Don't make comics about 700 year-old Christo-propaganda work of art. 

Last month I started reading this book of poems, The Divine Comedy. Why? No frigging clue. I may just be grasping for any vestiges of meaning on this cosmic toilet that is election year 2024 in the United States.

The book acts as a barely disguised philosophical argument for embracing Christianity and yet it's fascinating to this atheist's mind. It's internally consistent, and you have to commend the workmanship and world-building accomplished here. It's another win for humanity's ability to create art and another nail in the coffin to the belief that books like the Bible or the Quran could only come by divine hands. Human hands are plenty capable. 

The nine circles of hell according to Dante are: lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. I'd like to suggest that there's room for more. How about people who leave one-star reviews on Amazon to make bad jokes or the executives at Disney who seem content with diluting our memories with soul-less CGI cash grabs? That guy Jimmy from work that only communicates in dated memes? I bet we can come up with many more, unique to this century. 

Renovation ideas aside, Dante made space for a pretty exhaustive catalogue of sins. He had sections in hell reserved for "sowers of discord". Can you imagine what today's media is sending to this locale? It would be like a Fox News cruise that never stops. There was a section for "perjurers", a place whose census would boom with the Trump administration. It's as good a catalogue as someone stuck in an imperial, westernized, male-centric worldview could come up with in the 1300s.

Until next time, my dear readers, by which time I may be into Middle Age jewelry-making or Charlemagne-era agrarian law. Boy, what good comics those would make. 





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