OK. So I have read the latest. Hope these reactions are phrased at least slightly more coherently than I think the comic is:
Well, at least the artwork's back.
Pity that it's serving such an, at best, semicoherent story; and such an, IMO, unwise message.
-- for one thing, I keep wondering how the animals got into that mess in the first panel. That's not standard Christian theology, I don't think -- in Genesis God creates a functioning ecology (one in which, while we're at it, some of the animals eat other animals) and "saw that it was good". And unless created in that state, they must have had better living conditions at some point, or no young would have been produced and they'd long since have died out. And even when Adam and Eve got thrown out of Eden, wherever they wound up it was possible to make a living, even though by the sweat of their brows. So what happened?
And then there are all the questions about the weird disaster they create in the new place. Polluted springs don't "give up", they make those who drink from them sick. I suppose magic ones might give up, but wouldn't the animals drinking from them before they did still sicken? And if there isn't any water, thirst will get you before hunger will; at least for species not designed to get most of their liquid from the body fluids of their prey. And, if starvation in their original desert made them too weak to eat each other, why wouldn't it do the same thing after the springs gave up? And why didn't they eat each other in the original desert before they got too weak, until they got back down to carrying capacity -- especially given that as soon as they gain enough strength eating each other is what they all start doing? The desert clearly is supplying some food and water, as they hadn't all quite starved; just clearly not enough to go around.
And if none of them were supposed to eat each other, and they all had lots of food after the lamb fixed the place -- were they all sterile? all using birth control? (the birds are laying eggs, though --) all going to produce babies until that was no longer possible because they'd turned the place back into a desert by overgrazing?
And is this how she thinks actual predators behave (never mind the herbivores) -- they just keep slaughtering for the fun of it, leaving the bodies to rot in their water supply? Humans have been known to do that; but it's uncommon behavior for most species in a natural situation. Making her characters -- not that they are characters, none of them have any -- non human works against her there.
But I think the real problem's there in panel -- well, I think it's panel #7, though the panels aren't really clearly distinguished (which is not a problem, that I think is kind of neat.) Explicitly. "To live here you must be like me!"
That's explained in the next line as 'you have to be kind and gentle'. But it seems to mean, also, 'you must be vegans.' Which, as has been pointed out, isn't normal for even most herbivore species-- sheep included; and is flat out impossible for some of the carnivores. (Not to mention that overgrazing problem . . . ) Again, presenting her allegory in the form of non-humans is working against her, not for her.
It's pretty clear Minna doesn't mean just 'you mustn't be unnecessarily cruel to each other'. She means that everybody must live the same way -- that there is only One Right Way to be.
And there, again, is what I think is the underlying problem in all this.
