A four-panel comic by Niels Vergouwen (@nielsverdouwen) about medieval marginalia — the bizarre doodles monks left in the margins of illuminated manuscripts.
Panel 1: An angry rabbit shouts "Vile cur! Stop riding my brother as a steed!"
Panel 2: A small white dog rides a rabbit like a horse, holding a spear with a fleur-de-lis shield. "Never!"
Panel 3: A rabbit rides a GIANT SNAIL into battle, holding a spear with an eagle shield. "Then face my rabbit wrath!" A shocked old man watches.
Panel 4: A monk sits at his desk, drawing the scene in his manuscript. He looks at it with worry: "Nobody is going to believe me…"
The comic references the real phenomenon of medieval marginalia — the bizarre, often surreal doodles that scribes and monks left in the margins of illuminated manuscripts. Actual medieval manuscripts contain drawings of:
- Knights fighting snails
- Rabbits hunting humans
- Dogs riding other animals
- Monks shooting arrows at giant snails
- Weird hybrid creatures (griffins, manticores, etc.)
Historians debate why these existed — boredom relief, satirical commentary, symbolic meaning, or just the medieval equivalent of doodling during a boring meeting.
🎙️ Gorgocutie Explains: Medieval Margin Doodles
👋 Alex: Wait, medieval monks actually drew this stuff?
💋 Gorgocutie: They absolutely did, Alex. Open any Gothic manuscript from the 13th-14th century and you’ll find marginalia that makes modern memes look tame. Rabbits jousting with dogs, snails challenging knights, monkeys doing surgery — it’s all there.
👋 Alex: Why though?
💋 Gorgocutie: The leading theory is that copying manuscripts was incredibly tedious work. Monks spent hours every day transcribing religious texts by candlelight. The margins were their release valve — a place to be silly, satirical, and sometimes outright weird.
👋 Alex: So the monk in panel 4 is worried nobody will believe his battle scene?
💋 Gorgocutie: And the irony is that future historians would find it and take it VERY seriously. Some poor academic in 500 years is going to write a paper analyzing the socio-economic implications of rabbit-mounted warfare in early 21st century memes. The monk knows his doodles will outlive him and has no idea what people will make of them.
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