Episode Fifteen

http://www.ndbag.com/story/comic/15.html

Can it be true that pandas are never out of season? A worrying prospect, especially for those who've studied the classics, and remember Daffy's pronoun trouble during rabbit season. But there can be little doubt about the fact; after all, it's Pandbag himself that's telling us this.

But wait... isn't the boogeypanda a creature of myth? What, then, are we to make of Pandbag's assertion? Can we believe the word of a creature that doesn't exist? Certainly, we've grown up with an implicit trust of pandas, and none of us has any reason to doubt the word of Ndbag, but what if the two are combined? One is reminded of the clarity of phenolphthalein; when one mixes it with the equally colourless calcium hydroxide, one gets a new liquid; one of a different colour. Can it be that the combined words of a boogeyman and a panda can somehow lead us to an erroneous conclusion? Perhaps there are times of year when it isn't panda season?

The epistemological nature of this quandary is further clouded by the song that Pandbag sings; we're told that it's the season not just to shoot pandas, but to be them. Furthermore, one doesn't become a panda, but pandas. This leads to some confusion; is Ndbag warning us of the dangers of totalitarian societies in which the individual is subsumed into the whole, or is he telling us that those are the very societies least likely to fall through internecine conflict? We aren't told, and therein lies the point.

By refusing to offer us an opinion on the relative merits of different social systems, and by suggesting that it's always panda season, Ndbag is pointing out the necessity of each society to decide for itself. This refusal could well be traumatic for the countless numbers who've learned to rely on Ndbag for guidance, but we soon realise that he's telling us that his purpose is to guide, not to command. By forcing us to think for ourselves, he's giving us the opportunity to grow; as individuals, as societies, as a species.

Episode Fourteen

http://www.ndbag.com/story/comic/14.html

Epistemology has, over the centuries, brought many philosophers and logicians together, and driven just as many apart. To this day the world's greatest thinkers are divided over many aspects of the field, and it's taken until now for someone to come forward with a clarion call to philosophers and logicians both; a clarion call to unite against the common enemy: the statistician.

Episode Thirteen

http://www.ndbag.com/story/comic/13.html

There are many questions that have long plagued humanity; some of them meaningless, others unanswerable. Solutions have been offered to most of these questions, but those answers have inevitably proved to be wrong; sometimes dangerously so. Who can forget the pandemonium that resulted from the attempts to find out how many chickens it took to change a lightbulb? One question, though, has vexed humanity's greatest thinkers since ancient times more than any other: what do you get when you cross a panda with a boogeyman?

Episode Twelve

http://www.ndbag.com/story/comic/12.html

For decades now, science fiction writers and philosophers alike have struggled with the question "what does it mean to be human?" The question is still for the most part academic, but in the years and decades to come, the problem will become more and more pressing. We are fortunate, then, that Ndbag has chosen to address this issue now, before it's too late.

Episode Eleven

http://www.ndbag.com/story/comic/11.html

It's normal for philosophers to ask 'why are we here'; it takes a boogeyman to ask where 'here' is.

All things are relative, of course, so in most cases 'here' is meaningless unless some context -- implicit or explicit -- is present. We know San Diego is on the west coast of the US. However, this means different things to different people. To those of us in Europe, 'in America' would suffice. To an American, 'in California' could well be the description. To a Californian, 'over there, dude' is the most likely location. In all cases, we think of San Diego as being somewhere relative to where we are; to 'here'.

Episode Ten

http://www.ndbag.com/story/comic/10.html

What does the 'H' stand for? We can examine every detail of this latest chapter, but we're given no clue. As we traverse the panels we see many items that might point the way, but they all contradict each other. We face an ambiguity that leaves us utterly bemused.

In the first panel, we see a queue for H, leading us to suppose that Ndbag is alluding to quantum holograms; but is that likely? Yes, it seems plausible at first glance, but subsequent panels belie this plausibility. And when we realise this, we realise how naïve we were to think it in the first place, as the presence of Pandaman and the unnamed beastie show quite categorically that the Q stands for Quadrotriticale.