What Makes Us Laugh

By Karon Flage
April 1, 2006

With Tart Tastes, we focus on great creators and topics within comics. Our opinions often vary in proportion to the diversity of our tastes, but just occasionally we find a subject on which we can all agree! This month we focus on humor. What are the comic books and comic strips that tickle your funny bone?

Corrina Lawson

This is going to sound silly, but the letter column in DC's Legion of Super-Heroes. It's not a normal letter column, it's two or three pages of the Legionnaires answering fan mail, goofing on the questions and each other. In the last issue, there was even little story about how Cham fooled his friends. It's silly and dopey and it also makes me smile. It's just too bad it doesn't run every issue.

Patti Martinson

Comic Strips
Heart of the City
I heart Heart. A girly little spitfire who is almost always in trouble and gives her single mom endless headaches. She often ropes her friend/partner in crime Dean into her schemes. The spunky attitude of Heart and the truly funny situations she gets into always gets a laugh out of me.
5th Wave
A one panel comic that is part Dilbert and part The Far Side. Always poking fun at technology, particularly any and all aspects of computer technology.
Cathy
A sistah! I love her struggles with work, technology, weight, her parents and her love life.
Non Sequitur
An odd strip. I never know what topic will come up next. Will it be perpetually morbid Danae and her horse Lucy? A one panel political/social commentary? Or an adventure featuring a different cast of characters?

Regular Comic
The only current comic book I buy is Dork Tower. It comes as a regular comic issue as well as a comic strip. I love all the characters: Carson the Muskrat, Igor, Matt, The Perky Goth Gilly and Ken. Each adorkable in their own way. It gently pokes fun and comic book collecting, RPGs, Game Stores, Convetions, and other similar nerdy obssessions.

Limited Run Comic
I greatly enjoyed the mini-series pairing Human Torch/Spider-Man when both were still teenagers. Like teenagers they snipe and snark at each other and generally act like goofballs, but they have a genuine friendship and it stood the test of time.

Rebecca Salek Buchanan

Humor is so subjective. More than a few times, ps238 and Nodwick have reduced me to tears of laughter; on the other hand, the humor of Transmetropolitan and The Punisher is a little too dark and bizarre for my tastes. So, in addition to ps238 and Nodwick, what else makes me giggle?

The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius, most definitely. :) (What is taking Winick so long????) Collections of such comic strips as Fox Trot, Heart of the City and (duh) Calvin and Hobbes are always fun. Oh, yeah, and anything featuring Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge.

Katherine Keller

Right now when it comes to funny bone tickling, I have to go with Marvel Comics's Cable and Deadpool.

In a way that I cannot praise enough, writer Fabian Nicieza brings the side splittingly silly (Deadpool) and the serious (Cable's grand dreams for mankind) and the two intersect because it usually involves Cable cleaning up after one of Deadpool's messes.

In an early story (now sadly out of print — shame on you, Marvel!) members of the One World Church have a plan to unify the human race. By releasing a virus that turns everybody blue.

Because it's generally speaking, not a good thing to be releasing untested viruses and turning people blue, Cable and Deadpool leap into action to try and stop the nefarious plot. Their failure is total, catastrophic, and howlingly funny.

The virus is released and ... It turns everybody in the world pink.

I won't explain exactly how that problem is resolved, but Cable attains messianic status by turning everybody back to whatever color they were before. (And there's some good, thought provoking commentary along the way about racism, religious zealots, and bio engineering.)

Oh, and Deadpool's convinced that Bea Arthur is the sexiest woman alive.

Wolfen Moondaughter

Mangaka Rumiko Takahashi is my main go-to gal for comedy.

In Ranma 1/2, she tells the story of a 16-year-old martial artist named Ranma Saotome. Thanks to an accident at an enchanted hot spring, Ranma turns into a girl when splashed with cold water (and back to a boy with hot). The girl he's betrothed to, Akane Tendo, doesn't look too favorably upon her fiance: she's constantly calling him a pervert and hitting him (with stuff like the dining-table). You know they love each other, though, even if they fight all the time.

The wackiness doesn't stop with Ranma, though — other characters are afflicted with similar water-induced curses. His father, Genma, becomes a panda, and uses signs to communicate. (Not sign language, actual signs that appear out of nowhere and have whatever he wants to say written on them!) Genma will trade anything, even Ranma, for food, if she can’t easily steal it. Ryoga is Ranma's old schoolmate, a boy who is perpetually lost (even in his own back yard) — and also happens to turn into Akane's pet pig, P-Chan. (Akane doesn't even know who P-Chan really is!). Amazon girl Shampoo, who insists Ranma is her fiance, becomes a cat — and Ranma is deathly afraid of cats. Shampoo's own suitor, Mousse, who is blind as a bat without his glasses, turns into a duck.

Not everyone has a curse on them, though. One of Akane's sisters, Nabiki, could give Alex P. Keaton a run for his money (if being greedy were a marathon race, I mean), while the other sister, Kasumi, is an oblivious sweetheart (as in she often allows mortal enemies into the house and serves them tea). Their father, Soun, is always weepy and, alongside his best friend, Genma, is a bit of a schemer. Akane's long-time (unwanted) suitor, the swordsman Tatewaki Kuno, falls in love with Girl-type Ranma, never realizing that she's actually the same person as his rival, Boy-type Ranma! (And Kuno doesn't give up on pursuing Akane, either!) Kuno's sister, the gymnast Kubara no Kodachi (The Black Rose), is deviously cunning, and will stop at nothing to steal Ranma for herself. Their father, Principal Kuno, is obsessed with Hawaii and with giving students frightful haircuts. Dr. Tofu is a brilliant chiropractor — except when his crush, Kasumi, is around, which causes his glasses to steam up. (Being treated by him at times like that can be very dangerous for one's health!) Ukio Kuonji, another fiance to Ranma, makes killer okinamiyaki (japanese pizza) — sometimes literally! And let's not forget Shampoo's conniving grandmother, Cologne, or Soun and Genma's panty-stealing master, Happosai. And these are just the regular and semi-regular characters — there are plenty of equally-bizarre characters that are only around for one or two story arcs!

Maison Ikkoku is another funny manga by Takahashi-sama. It follows the life of Yusaku Godai as he struggles to get through college, get (and keep) a job, and win the heart of his building manager, the young widow Kyoko Otonashi. Yusaku's neighbors, though seem determined to ruin his every goal in life. If Mr. Yotsuya isn't stealing Yusaku's food (or his porn collection), he's doing everything he can to humiliate or blackmail the poor boy. Sexy Akemi and noisy, nosy Mrs. Ichinose — both notorious drunks — are big distractions as well. If that weren't enough, Yusaki has a rival for Kyoko's affections in hot tennis coach Shun Mitaka, and an unwanted girlfriend in Kozue Nanao. Top it all off with a meddling grandmother, a pair of potential in-laws who obviously have their eyes on Shun, and one misunderstanding after another, Yusaku's life is truly a comedy of errors!

And then there's Takahashi-sama's Inuyasha, the story of Kagome, a modern girl who travels back in time to the Fuedal Era and gets caught up in a hunt for the shards of a sacred jewel with a half-demon dog-boy (Inuyasha, of course). It's a drama as much as it is a comedy, true, but that doesn't make the humorous moments any less funny. Inuyasha and Kagome have a sort of love-hate thing going on, as do the demon-hunter, Sango, and the womanizing Buddhist priest, Miroko. Shippo, the little kitsune (fox demon) boy, is amusing in his boyish antics. Kagome's family is usually good for a laugh, especially her Shinto-priest grandfather, who is almost always wrong in his so-called knowledge about the family' temple's artifacts.

I also love when Inuyasha plays with Kagome's cat. Kagome's friends' concern over her long absences is quite humorous, as her grandfather usually tells the school she's suffering from one horrible illness or another; there's a boy who has a crush on Kagome who's always giving her horrific remedies. The rivalry between Inuyasha and Kouga the wolf demon over Kagome's affections is amusing (and Kouga's packmates are funny in their own right). Then there's the "full-demon" Sesshomaru, Inuyasha's half-brother and sort-of enemy. Sesshie has a silly, whiny, yes-man servant named Jokkan, whom Sesshi is always torturing or threatening with death. And despite Sesshie's professed disdain for humanity, he becomes guardian to a young human orphan, revealing an often-humorous soft side while trying valiantly to remain aloof and stoic. (Can you tell he's my favorite character?)

I'm not such a fan of Takahashi's first break-out hit, Urusei Yatsura (usually known in the States as Lum), but you might still find it worth a look. It's about a girl-crazy boy named Ataru, and the insanely-jealous alien girl (Lum) who is determined to be his wife. Of course that means there's a cast full of bizarre aliens to go with Lum (the title can be translated into "Those Obnoxious Aliens"), but there's also an old monk named Cherry and his gown-up, voluptuous niece, Sakura (which of course means "cherry blossom"; cue punish humor). It's not too bad a series, but I think the others are much better.