Well, OK...where to begin with this strip? This is the second to last strip...there WILL be one more, despite the apparent finality of this one.

I always said that if Downfall were to end, Curt would have to kill himself, because that's how his character is. I'm not really sure why...it just always struck me as the only really logical way to end a wretched character like Curt. So here we are with Curt's brain splashed across Chip and Anne.

I tried to have this last season as a sort of arc, with Curt's downwardly spiraling mental/emotional state serving to actually justify the title of the comic. Curt's unraveling and ultimate self-destruction was sort of hinted at vaguely before, but with this season, I actually researched paranoid schizophrenia and tried to use actual symptoms to clarify just what might be wrong with Curt.

As for what IS wrong with him, it's kind of explained next strip but not really. Is he schizophrenic? Clinically depressed? Is he just a badly wired person? It's not really important. What is important is that he sees his world differently than everyone else. He sees nothing but hopeless futility, a darkly funny conspiracy of misery and a struggle to find happiness that can't be attained. And he's right. (This will make more sense after the next strip.)

Oh...that's supposed to be tape over Curt's eyes. I read once about an examiner of crime scenes. The force of a gunshot can blast the eyes out of the skull, so some people tape their eyes shut. That just always stuck with me for some reason. So I used it here.