5 Comments

1. 

   Panel 1: sheep (symbolizing people who can be easily led) is reading fairy tales.

   Panel 2: two politicians lead the sheep away. Note red and blue ties. (Edit: as others have pointed out, in panel 2 the ties are black, so they are probably intended to be Secret Service agents.)

   Panel 3: politicians (red and blue ties) are engaging in a political debate, spinning fairy tales of what they will do, and likely describing the other candidate as wicked. Sheep is presumably on a chair in the audience.

   In panel 2, the sheep has a cane, symbolizing age, although really it’s this year’s US presidential candidates who are mobility challenged.

2. 

   So, is there then no connection to the strip’s frequent trope of Horace the Horse counting sheep to fall asleep? It often involves fantastic departures from the standard of the sheep lining up and jumping a fence, so I thought for this one he was trying out the technique of having the sheep read to him, and when that wasn’t soporific enough, having them engage in political debate.

3. 

   Panel 1: Horse is lazily falling asleep thinking about the soothing voice of an elderly sheep reading them a story.

   Panel 2: The secret service (sunglasses, dark suites, black ties) leads the elderly sheep away to clear the area. Horse is now fully awake.

   Panel 3: The peaceful, calm voice of the elderly sheep has been replaced by two candidates debating. This brings with it all the stress, anxiousness, anti-relaxing feelings one could imagine.

4. 

   The sheep are definitely part of Horace’s sleep therapy. Sheep #1 is reading a boring tale, but when that fails to be effective, the two secret-service sheep in panel 2 (wearing black ties, not red and blue) remove the ineffective performer, and replace him with a presentation guaranteed to induce sleep, if not a coma: a political debate (with politicians wearing colored ties).

   P.S. It should be noted that Samson (Samuli Lintula) is Finnish, so his political characterization is probably just a representation of a typical system, rather than a specific reference to any actual candidates. Without getting into too much detail, I’ll just note that the red-tied candidate has white hair.

   P.P.S. TedD (@3) not only types faster than I do, he correctly noted that the well-intentioned performers are actually having exactly the opposite effect on Horace.

5. 

   I like TedD’s interpretation. I would add that perhaps this reason this is happening in the first place is that this election, although American, is forcing itself into every aspect of everyone’s lives and it’s just about impossible to escape, whether you’re in Finland or Thailand, where I live and hear about it *all the time*. (Although that may be obvious.)

   I think it’s quite clever too in that the first sheep is reading fairy tales, so we can assume that the politicians are also spinning off fairy tales in the form of electoral promises.

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