The cartoon in question is the new Bob the Angry Flower strip. Warning: it may be upsetting to some.
Fans of Bob will already know that Bob is not a particularly nice character; indeed, he is often needlessly cruel and destructive (as his casual comment in the third panel shows). Yet despite the brutality of the act and his complete emotional detachment (as shown in the last panel), he demonstrates startling kindness for the dog itself. Is this another side of Bob we’ve not seen before? Or is it just part of the job? And has he been cruel or merciful to the dog?
It is the mark of a good artwork that it keeps you coming back to it (or at least I do) to think about it again and consider new interpretations. I would be interested to hear what y’all think.
Same here. It’s the third or fourth Bob I’ve seen, and I’ve yet to find it funny. Now, if he’d just booze up and riot, THEN we’d be talking about comedy!
Gee, other than the graphic depiction of the dog’s head getting blown apart I thought it was kind of sweet. Bob’s obviously in denial of the emotional impact of putting the dog down so he sublimates it into pretending his finger hurts. Sort of like how straight guys never cry; they just “have something in my eye.”
I don’t think it’s funny, but I wasn’t offended. In fact, it seems, from what you’ve said about the character of Bob, one of his better moments. Given the choice to use a shotgun, rather than anaesthetic, it was as mercifully done as possible.
Otto, I can’t say I agree he’s sublimating deeper emotions, but I’ll agree that overall the tone seemed rather touching. (Of course, I’d spent this afternoon reading the ‘Suicide Girl’ story from Sexy Losers. It is possible the mind warp of someone trying to have a romantic necrophiliac relationship has affected my judgement…)
It was a flamethrower. Bob loves excess. The comedy comes from his complete and utter detachment and perspective from the fact that he’s gone rather over the top in euthanizing this dog while complaining about the results.
If you check the frontpage of the site, you’ll see that the purpose behind the strip is having people tell him what the thought.
Me? Well, I could have done without the panel of the dogs head being blown apart, but other than that, I’ve seen worse.
If that’s not sig material then I don’t know what is.
It’s important to note that it’s not some random dog he killed but a dog that’s being put down at the end of its life like thousands of dogs are every day. Bob just chose an extreme method of doing so.
Well, In my take, Bob wasn’t being emotional to the dog at all - he was just using sweet talk and petting to keep the dog calm (yeah, the dog doesn’t really seem to need calming) so that the dog doesn’t move and spoil his shot (his weapon definitely seems to be some sort of rifle/shot-gun, not a flame thrower).
Perhaps even a bit of mocking the attitude of (normal) pet owners to their pets.
