Qui-God Jinn

This strip explores omnipresence--being everywhere simultaneously means you're in no one specific place. God's manifestation is just an illusion for the audience. Thus his avatar doesn't have the same properties as a functioning body. God's perspective is not limited to his body nor are his senses pegged to them.

God Will Hunting

The pregnant pause is a staple of 4 panel comics. In the host's head, he's thinking, "Yes, that sounds right" "No" "Maybe" "Why's asking me? he should know!" "Damn I should eat a mentos and hope to stumble upon a clear solution." In the end, he's sore from his defeat by God so starts getting rude.

Lord of Lords

Since the 4th Wall was broken last strip, the gloves are off. God is no longer limited by the rules and the host responds by citing his own super-4th wall power over the strip. I like God's speech in the third panel, it feels like an Old Testament style raw display of power.

Breaking the 4th Wall

The fourth wall refers to the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. The term refers to the imaginary boundary between any fictional work and its audience. In this cartoon it also refers literally to the four walls that make up a single panel of the strip. God manages to move the immovable rock not by lifting it but pulling out the ground from right under it by altering the structure of the cartoon itself.

the Zeus Method

The bolt is a creative and convenient little solution to the rock problem. Instead of moving it, God takes a hammer to it. Although, lightning has appeared previously as a manifestation of God's emotions, this is the first time we see God's lightning powers put to use. I suppose technically he controls all the elements but lightning seems to be his tool of choice.

The God, the Bad & the Ugly

In this strip I experiment with different color backgrounds. I like how the red in the third panel augments the frustration and futility, kind of like a red stop sign. The Man vs. Logic logo on top of the site comes from the second panel, which is one of my favorite actions shots of God. He just looks so into it.

God Rocks!

This strip begins the paradox of the stone storyline, which explores the nature of omnipotence. Asking God to create an immovable rock means creating two things—an ability, and also a weakness. Whether God can or cannot create the rock, He would no longer be omnipotent because He has a weakness, when the definition of omnipotence is not having a weakness.

God Old Boy

This interview explores God's ability to do the impossible, like divide by zero or add two plus two and get five. The final panel is meant to show a creative solution to a seemingly impossible problem by creating a sort of non-Euclidean shape that is both square and triangle. The question still remains though, could God divide by zero? tune in next week! (no, not really)

War

War bring out some of the most profound parts of human nature. It shows man at his best and worst, often in the same action. I have been watching The Pacific lately; it is a truly incredible miniseries. Much attention is paid to the indomitable will of the Japanese in combat. In the first episode, an injured Japanese soldier calls for help and two American medics come to him. The solder detonates a grenade, killing himself and the two medics. He could have saved his own life but instead he choose to take out two Americans. This pattern is repeated over the course of the show, as Japanese troops choose to sacrifice their own life to take out one or two Americans. Perhaps the most famous example of this strategy is the kamikaze pilots of WWII.

To the Americans, this strategy is both alien and monstrous. Their combatants have abandoned their own hopes of survival out spite. As Leckie writes in a letter home, "The jungle holds both beauty and terror in its depths, the most terrible of which is man. . . There are things that men can do to each other that are sobering to the soul." It is easy to see the monstrosity of the suicide attacker: they vehemently choose death over life. Their actions could be seen as those of a sociopath; however even sociopaths are usually deterred by self-interest. Perhaps the Devil is a better comparison, since he is said to care only about how much harm he causes other and is reckless to the costs of his actions even to himself.

However, self sacrifice is typically associated with the most noble of man's endeavors. And perhaps a noble motive explains the Japanese suicide attacks as well. Whatever is driving them, it is certainly not self-interest. They believe that their actions will keep their comrades safe or will decisively lead to a victory in the war. It is easy to understand how the men who the Americans feared as representing the most monstrous and spiteful aspects of human nature could represent the most heroic and noble aspects of it too. Therein lies what makes war so compelling--it reveals the best and worst sides of man's nature, often in a single act.