Bittersweet Candy Bowl

5. The Burden of Parenthood, original chapter posted 7/15/11

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Transcript

*Mike and Lucy are sitting in the classroom.*
Sex-ed teacher: Okay, class..

*Sex-ed teacher smiles.*
Sex-ed teacher: Today we’re gonna talk about…

[Intense zoom-in on Sex-ed teacher’s angry face.]
Sex-ed teacher: SEX.

Sex-ed teacher: Sex equals babies.. .. and you don’t want babies.
[The chalkboard behind her features crude blob creatures having sex, having a crying blob baby, and both mother and father blobs sick and dying.]

Sex-ed teacher: You’ll be bloated with triplets at age thirteen with chlamydia all over your face and then you’ll die..

*Zoom in on Sex-ed teacher’s squinting eye.*
Sex-ed teacher: .. of AIDS.

[Birth control and condoms appear in the background.]
Sex-ed teacher: You might think “But there’s always contraception.”

Sex-ed teacher: But you’re wrong. DEAD wrong.

Sex-ed teacher: The only path to salvation is removal of the organ..
Sex-ed teacher: Still, that won’t get rid of the STDs. They’ll remain..
Sex-ed teacher: .. like, forever.
[Two more crude illustrations are on the chalkboard, one depicting a pair having torn out their sexual organs, and another screaming “WAUGHHH GONORRHEA” as they throw up.]

*Sex-ed teacher pushes up her glasses.*
Sex-ed teacher: So unless you want to die and have hundreds of spawn..
Sex-ed teacher: .. don’t have sex until you’re married.

Sex-ed teacher: Any questio--

*Yashy shouts at a mortified Mike.*
Yashy: WHOA have you been makin’ Mom abort like EVERY DAY, Flea?!
Mike: N-no!! I never even…
*Lucy covers her face in embarrassment, and Sex-ed teacher scowls.*

Author commentary

Veronica: Ah, The Burden of Parenthood. This was one of my most popular chapters back in the day so I decided to redraw it in 2010 when we were preparing our first book, Volume One. Now it’s been edited again to fit cleanly in the Omnibus! So many evolutions.. I swear this Omnibus project is the last of them!

See, when you get married, you become immune to disease and pregnancy. It’s the ultimate contraceptive!

Final panel makes me laugh so much, Yashy completely doesn’t understand (as she shouldn’t, honestly)

Oliver: Damn. Definitely don’t get gonorrhea.

These proper-panelled chapters were harmonised with the grid ones, using this new scheme! It’s a little different. We also touched it up with distinct border colours and a distinct foreground and background. The whole point was to make the archive a lot more stylistically coherent — I sure hope it worked!