Get Fuzzy: Reflections on a vase

The punchline to this comic exists in the unseen fourth panel and is funnier for being unseen. The third panel, meanwhile, is made funnier by the moment of uncertainty the absence of the obvious punchline causes. The second panel is made funnier when we realize--the uncertainty of the third panel having passed--that Bucky's not actually looking at the vase. And the first panel is made funnier by knowing just what kind of reflections Bucky means. And so maybe the punchline is in the first panel. And so maybe the first panel is the fourth panel. And it's at its funniest the moment you just catch sight of that.

Garfield: I finally nailed it back down!

This Garfield, as usual, would be better without Garfield. But even with Garfield, it's pretty good, mostly because it manages a degree of subtlety that Paws Inc. rarely attempts. The funny part of the comic is Jon's bandaged hand. Garfield's cheap punchline is mostly just a distraction.

Beetle Bailey: He was watching a program on the food channel.

This is a bizarre, but perfectly inoffensive joke that's neither worth praising nor criticizing. I do appreciate, however, the chewed-on television in the background of the first panel that you don't even notice until you've read the second panel. It's not the kind of attention to detail Mort Walker Inc. usually specializes in.

Red and Rover: Rover, look. I'm inivisible!

The way cartoonists use words and pictures plays a large role in the quality of any given comic. In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud labels comics in which the words and drawing do exactly the same job as "duo-dependent." They're generally the worst kind of comics because they indicate on the part of the cartoonist a lack of confidence in both his own ability to make himself understood and the ability of his readers to understand.

This Red and Rover doesn't quite meet that criterion, but it's far too close for comfort. Red's dialog isn't so much complementary as it is redundant. It exists mostly because Brian Bassett didn't trust his audience to see Red in the tree. But the whole point of the comic is that Red is hard to see! Putting the word bubble there makes Red easy to see, and makes Rover the butt of the joke instead of all of us.

Monty: Mr. Crumpet, I command you...Eviscerate! Eviscerate!

Things that are funny about this cartoon, in order from least funny to most funny:

1. That the dog is scared of the cat.
2. That the dog is a shih tzu named Mr. Crumpet.
3. That the dog's bow is identical to Master Sedgwick's bow tie.
4. Eviscerate! Eviscerate!
5. Disembowel! Disembowel!
6. That the dog drinks kiwi-lemonade.
7. That the dog drank too much kiwi-lemonade.
8. That the dog is actually peeing in the third panel.

Brewster Rockit: Now, imagine yourself flying!

The Yoda parody is fine, but what really makes this comic funny is Brewster's facial expressions.

Brewster Rockit and Monty: I think your machine is malfunctioning.

Both of these comics rely on fairly subtle, mostly image-based set-ups, and therefore actually require the reader to pay attention in order to completely get the jokes. This is an unfortunately rare occurrence in the comics section.

On another note, I've been meaning to write about Monty for a while now, but it's such an efficient, low-key sort of comic that it's often hard to find anything particularly interesting to say about it. But it's one of the better comic strips around, and you should probably read it.

Get Fuzzy and Doonesbury: Boogie shark.

Most great comic strips are built on great characters. And having great characters lets artists do things they ordinarily couldn't do.

Neither of these strips has a traditional joke. The pun in Get Fuzzy is buried in the middle panels and never explicitly commented on, while the construction of the joke in Doonesbury is so fractured that it doesn't really play as one. Both artists even go so far as to make little meta-jokes about the subtlety of the jokes that would normally be the centerpiece of a comic by having characters not get them.

But both strips are funny anyway, entirely because of the character interaction. Comics with lesser characters can't get away with this particular kind of subversion and still be funny.

Stone Soup: But we seem to be in a monsoon.

This, sadly, is what passes for a subtle metaphor in the comics section.

In fairness, the comic strip is not a medium that lends itself well to subtlety. Part of this is because of the combination of imagery and words; there's a fairly significant tendency to draw something and then have a character explain the drawing.

That's most of the problem with this Stone Soup. It would have been a more interesting strip if the author had allowed the punchline to fall on the image. Just seeing the two characters standing together silently in the rain would have been more in fitting with the melancholic subject. Instead, she went for the easier laugh, and the comic suffers accordingly.