Hopelessly Lost, But Making Good Time #59

By Pam Bliss
March 1, 2006

Yes, it's finally time to make good on all my previous threats and actually write the installments about humor. What makes comedies funny? (Well, some of them, anyway ... ) How can you make your own comics funny?

I have absolutely no idea.

That was quick. Let's go make homemade spaghetti sauce. I actually know something about that.

But maybe we're giving up too quickly. There's so much humor in the world: I can't think if a single person who doesn't find a chuckle or two in real life, and most of us like at least some kinds of humorous storytelling. It would be a poor writer who isn't occasionally amused by something he or she has written, and some of us have been lucky enough to know the exquisite pleasure of hearing someone else laugh. There is nothing better for a person's ego on this or any world.

The desire to provoke the audience to laughter is probably the reason many creators want to tell stories in the first place, and humor can be an important component in dramas, adventures, tragedies, and even non-fiction narratives. There has to be something to say about it that doesn't sound stupid.

What's so funny?

So if we accept that there is funny stuff, and that funny stuff is important, how can we tell what stuff is funny? The obvious answer is that stuff that makes you laugh is funny. But what about all the times somebody gives you a book or a comic or a video, telling you it's a total scream, and you find it dull, offensive, or worse, both? That, rather than "what is comedy?" is the true mystery of humor.

I used to do a gag cartoon minicomic called Sparky the Dog. Each volume consisted of a couple dozen single panel comics, talking dog jokes mostly, full of stupid puns and odd facts and weird little pseudophilosophical insights. And when people read it, they almost universally thought some of the gags were a laff riot, and others were duds. Fine: not everything you try is going to be successful. I spent several years meticulously soliciting and collecting these comments and charting them onto the cartoons, trying desperately to get the audience to tell me which of my jokes were funny.

What did I learn? I learned that the audience has no idea either. My plan would have worked fine if everyone, or even a plurality, agreed. But what I found was that for every reader who told me a particular cartoon stank on ice, another one told me it was the best of the bunch. Some of these people were regular readers, and over time, I found I could sometimes predict that a certain person was going to get a charge out of a certain gag. But everyone else was a pure mystery. I came to a conclusion that I'll admit I don't like much.

I now think that it's the reader who takes the final creative step in the building of a comedy. Nothing is universally funny. Each reader, with his or her unique background, tastes, likes and dislikes, will decide whether or not to laugh at any humorous offering, and the next reader is quite likely to make an entirely different choice.

Make yourself laugh!

In the end, you have to write comedy for yourself. Make yourself laugh as you write and draw, and let the chips fall where they may. Comedy can be a very divisive thing. If you go all out for laughs, you have to accept that you will lose some of your potential audience: the large and vocal group "who just don't think that kind of thing is funny". This applies just as much to the creator who works in shimmering word play or wry comments on the absurdity of everyday life as it does to someone who specializes in fart jokes and potty humor. Highbrow or lowbrow, or even a zesty combination, no jokester is everything to everyone. Add to this the fact that many people find certain kinds of humor actively offensive, and if they see your work in that light, nothing will get them to read it. You may just have to write them off.

Offended people aside, the best way to broaden the appeal of your humorous work is to combine humor with some other attractive, compelling story elements. Death, violence and sex are full blown clichés as comedy ingredients, but there's no denying that the black comedy, the action comedy, the romantic comedy, and the sex comedy are all story types with proven historic appeal. And appeal to the creator as well — I've dabbled in all of them and found them rather fun.

But everything that makes for a good comics story mixes well with a dose of humor: vivid depictions of real world history or dense and skillful fictional world building, a strong plot, an individual take on a universal theme, a compelling evocation of time and place, well realized characters, and, of course, truly excellent drawings. That way, if your particular brand of humor doesn't ring a reader's bell, there are other parts of the story that may attract and hold his or her interest. Or maybe not; nothing comes closer to a person's core than his or her conception of what is funny. But you'll have taken your shot.

I also think this mixed approach may benefit creators in the long run. Maybe I'm just not a very funny person, but I found that I burned out on making gag cartoons rather quickly. After a while I felt like had told every joke I know enough times to bore even me — and I was terrified I was boring my audience. Other forms of storytelling, variety in settings and tones, and the interplay of characters that were as close to fully alive as I could make them, these have never failed to hold my attention. And I can still write plenty of gags and jokes; with the prompts offered by the other parts of the story, they almost write themselves. In fact, they tend to insist on it — I don't think I could ever write a story that wasn't at least partially a comedy.

None of this is intended to discourage anyone out there from trying to make funny comics, whether they are gag cartoons or epic narratives. Far from it — the word "comics" shares its very roots with the word "comedy". We've worked so hard to expand the image of comics, to get the world at large to see it as a serious medium, one that is worthy of great themes and serious topics, that we may have lost sight of just how good comics can be at being funny.

Comics share with film the ability to juxtapose funny words with funny images, an ability that makes them an ideal media for humor. Comics take this even further by adding the incredible flexibility of drawings. The tricks of the cartoonist — distortion, exaggeration, the manipulation of focus and point of view — can move from serious to funny at lightning speed, and the more "over the top" you go with these tricks the funnier the results can be. Combine this with sharp writing, and the results can be, well, barrel of laughs. Of course, it's also easy to do it wrong and end up with a tasteless mess, but if you do it right, we'll all be rolling on the floor.

Next time: The Great Big List of Funny Stuff.

Pam Bliss has been making comics since 1989, and the minicomic, in all its infinite variety, is her favorite form. Her cartoon short stories are set in the perfect Midwestern small town, Kekionga, Indiana, where just about anything can happen. Her new ongoing series, KEKIONGA, explores the mysteries of that most mysterious place through the eyes of an innocent young superhero. For more about all the Kekionga stories, visit www.paradisevalleycomics.com. Or, for updates on work in progress, essays on storytelling and other subjects, auto industry comments and random stuff, including a thrilling weekly adventure serial, read Sharkipede's LiveJournal No Silver Cars at http://www.livejournal.com/users/sharkipede/.

Paradise Valley Comics
No Silver Cars
Sparky's Minicomics Tips:
- Part One
- Part Two