The Timon of Athens Death Clock

I'm still on vacation this week at the Stratford Festival, so here's another low-body-count death clock from everybody's favorite Shakespeare play about misanthropy!

I don't know what exactly Timon dies of. It's not a broken heart. Overdose of bitterness? Toxic accumulation of spite? In any event, if my death clocks only counted onstage deaths, this would be the emptiest of all the tragedy death clocks.

It would be empty, basically.

If you want more Good Tickle Brain action this week, take a peek at my Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, where I'm posting updates on my adventures in Stratford, Ontario. 

The Coriolanus Death Clock

I'm on vacation this week at the Stratford Festival, so this week's death clocks will be ones with lower body counts. Let's start with everybody's favorite blood-soaked warrior...

Given how much violence is talked about in Coriolanus, it's quite surprisingly to realize that only one named character actually dies. Of course, it happens to be the title character...

If you want more Good Tickle Brain action this week, take a peek at my Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, where I'm posting updates on my adventures in Stratford, Ontario. 

The Antony & Cleopatra Death Clock

Like the wheels on the bus headed towards DEATH TOWN, the Shakespearean Death Clocks keep going 'round and 'round...

This was a particularly hard play to make a death clock for, as it has about a bazillion different scenes and at least a million different characters. I've tried to get them all, but if I've missed any, do let me know in the comments below. (EDIT: Thanks to Charmiander in the comments for pointing out that I had missed Alexas!) And now some notes:

  1. Fulvia is Antony's third wife. She doesn't make an appearance. She just dies.

  2. Pacorus makes an appearance onstage as a corpse. He apparently killed Marcus Crassus and Ventidius killed him in revenge. Don't ask me who any of those people are. I don't know and, as far as I can tell, they are all totally superfluous to the plot.

  3. This play might win the award for "Most Natural Deaths in a Tragedy". (I'm counting broken hearts as natural deaths. They're sad, yes, but nobody sticks a dagger in 'em or poisons them or anything.)

Next week I'll be at the Stratford Festival! I'll still be posting Death Clocks (as I still have a number of tragedies to get through) but they'll be ones with low body-counts, to give me some extra time off to enjoy my theatre binge. I'll be documenting my adventures on my various social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and my resurrected Instagram) so follow me there to see what I'm up to!

The Julius Caesar Death Clock

Time for some more Shakespearean Death Clocks! This week has a distinctly Roman theme, starting with Julius Caesar:

See, Brutus and Messala can't quite agree on exactly how many senators the triumvirate puts to death. Messala says 100, Brutus says 70. At any rate, it was a lot.

I've left off the other conspirators, such as Casca and Decius Brutus and all. They presumably all get killed off by Octavius and Antony, either before or after Philippi, but their fates aren't mentioned in the text. 

Tune in on Thursday for another Roman death clock... this one featuring SNAKES.

The Merlion and Me

This coming Sunday is Singapore's 50th anniversary of independence! To celebrate, I've drawn this exceptionally long comic for you:

In case my ham-fisted drawings didn't accurately convey what the Merlion looks like, this is what it looks like:

Here is the original Merlion statue, by local sculptor Lim Nang Seng.

Here is the original Merlion statue, by local sculptor Lim Nang Seng.

And here is the giant Sentosa Merlion edifice. You can climb to a viewing gallery inside its mouth and on top of its head.

And here is the giant Sentosa Merlion edifice. You can climb to a viewing gallery inside its mouth and on top of its head.

You can see the Sentosa video I mention here. While I have yet to find the original video I saw (with the CGI Merlion shooting laser beams at the storm, the Sentosa Merlion page still mentions it:

And finally, here is me getting attacked by Murray the Merlion. Majulah Singapura! 

The Macbeth Death Clock

I apologize if you're sick of looking at dead stick figures, but I'm having a hard time stopping now. 

You'll note that Macbeth's death procession is a fairly steady one. Unlike Hamlet, where most of the dying is crammed into the last scene, the murder and mayhem in Macbeth is fairly evenly spaced out. Some notes:

  • I've included Macdonald, who doesn't appear in the play at all, but is famous for being the poor sap who Macbeth unseams from the nave to the chops.

  • I've also included the Thane of Cawdor, because he's important to the plot.

  • The precise number of Macduff's children who are slaughtered is not specified, but it's definitely more than one, so I've added a random baby Macduff to make them plural.

  • It's not specified exactly how Lady Macbeth dies. Malcolm says she "by self and violent hands / Took off her life", which I've interpreted to mean "she stabs herself", because I'm getting really good at drawing stick figures stabbing themselves.

If you want to see how I drew this death clock, check out the latest edition of my e-mail newsletter, and then subscribe, so you never have to miss another sneak peek again!

A Good Tickle Shoppe note: I will be at the Ohio Light Opera for part of this week. All orders placed between August 5-8 will be fulfilled next Monday. Sorry for the slight delay!