Hagar the Horrible and Zits: They taught him too well...

In yesterday's post about Beetle Bailey, I wanted to compare it to a strip or two that used exaggeration well. Unfortunately, there were no good examples of well-employed exaggeration yesterday. Fortunately, there are today.


Neither of these is particularly brilliant, but both are competent. They tell actual jokes that rely on exaggeration. In Zits, the premise is that teenagers eat a lot. The joke is Jeremy's exaggerated appetite, which requires that he make a snack to tide him over for the thirty seconds until dinner is ready. In Hagar the Horrible, the premise is that animal training consists of the animal only doing what the owner asks. The joke is this premise taken to such an extreme that Snert requires absurd precision in his instructions before he will do anything. I'm not exactly doubled over in laughter here, but the jokes make sense and are affable enough.

In yesterday's Beetle Bailey, on the other hand, there was no joke, and the exaggeration did not follow logically from the premise. It was, in other words, an epic fail.