Thursday, December 12, 2019


We have not taken a local newspaper for many years.  We have cause to use old newspapers for the time being, so we now have them lying around.  They have a comics section.  I always find that exciting and put them aside to read later, when I get a moment.  The reverse of that page also has the bridge hand, jumble, crytogram, etc.

The funnies aren't that funny.  I have not seen some of them for years, but they are relying on the same jokes I left off with in 2006.  It's like picking up with a soap opera six years later.  Within two episodes, you have caught up on just about everyone's story because it's the same thing.

Part of this is me, not the comics.  Humor is often delicate and belongs to its own age and no other. My father-in-law saw nothing funny about The Far Side - it was merely opaque to him. I, in turn, was only mildly amused by Laurel and Hardy.  My father loved Pogo, and I could get a few chuckles from it.  He next loved B.C., and I liked that better, but nowhere near as well as he did.  I understand they are making it into a movie, and I can not really understand why even my own sons would like the idea, never mind their children. I followed some of the comics my sons liked, such as Get Fuzzy, with some pleasure, though I thought it was ultimately just a snarkier, crueler Garfield.


james said...

Part of it is the mismatch between the expectations (mine and the author's) then and now, but some strips that I used to like I don't care for anymore either. Though I usually like Arlo&Janis, and enjoy "Strange Planet."

Maybe the latter rings a bell--it's like hanging around Aspies, with a whole 'nother take on the world. But I'd bet that 1) if he keeps it going two more years, he'll have wrung the concepts dry and, 2) if I still enjoyed it at all, it would be from familiarity and not from unexpected incongruities, and 3) if I came back to it 10 years from now I wouldn't enjoy it so well.

I watched some Spike Jones on Youtube a couple of weeks ago, and a lot of the physical humor and mugging felt completely flat--but I could almost fell how it would have been funny then.

Deevs said...

My dad still gets a local paper, and I'll read the comics once in a while. I don't think it's a matter of the jokes not being funny. I'd argue a lot of them don't actually contain jokes. I'm not even trying to be snarky here. Many punchlines just come off as non sequiturs.

Oddly enough, Family Circus is often one of the funniest to me despite my distaste for it when I was growing up. Though I don't have kids of my own, I've got a bunch of nieces and nephews. Now when I read Family Circus I actually get it.

Korora said...

Every collection of Krazy Kat Sunday strips comes with a section of scholia at the end called the Ignatz Mouse Debaffler Page.

Uncle Bill said...

Try "Pickles.". It's the only one that can still make me laugh out loud.

Estoy_Listo said...

Pickles is brilliant, and gas been for years

james said...

After examining the funnies pages, I agree that Deevs is correct--even setting aside the continuing stories. The "punch line" is often the equivalent of a laugh track.

I seem to remember hearing about somebody editing some sitcom recordings to remove the laugh track. The result was allegedly deemed rather unfunny.