Comic Strip Epiphany

29 Apr 2016

I’ve been reading comic strips for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I had every Calvin and Hobbes book and every Far Side. These days I read plenty of web comics. I recently discovered MRA Dilbert, where the words on Dilbert comics are replaced by the bizarre blog rantings of Scott Adams. This made me realize what (for me) makes a comic strip great, the art has to be part of the joke. For many Dilbert strips, the art adds nothing–the joke would work just as well as an all-text tweet.

But look at this classic Calvin, it isn’t funny at all without the art!

It just seems odd to write a comic that doesn’t utilize the whole medium. It’s like reading text off a PowerPoint slide.

Anyway, here’s my favorite example of a text joke that’s kinda funny that becomes hilarious with the right art.

I know I've posted this before but I absolutely love that @twoodle_05 brilliantly animated above (↑) tweet pic.twitter.com/c35DtZkRaQ

— Matt Oswalt (@MattOswaltVA) September 27, 2015

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it. –E. B. White