I recently sent this to an editor in response to the statement, "I don't get it." It is a statement that has been said to me a number of times since I began drawing the strip. I've never actually so fully responded before and so I when I did I was a little amazed at myself for summing up my vision on this strip, and comedy in general, so well. Read it or not, I was just glad that I wrote it and wanted to share.
The following has been edited slightly from the original to leave the recipient out of the conversation:
"Let me give an explanation of what I do and maybe it will help you understand where I and my comics are coming from. It will not necessarily make them funny to you but at least you'll know. All of [the comics on this blog] are the ones that are more recently released to the public. The ninja fighting the beast (Please, help. Preconception kills.) is one that I've drawn most recently [as of October 2008].
First, I don't try to make jokes when I draw. I think that jokes are cheap and only work in specific instances for certain people. They generally rely on pop culture references or puns. Those type of comics have a very short life span with little-to-no replay value. Instead I try to create as real a scene as possible in my kingdom, Elphia, where the characters have feelings and reactions to the things that are going on around them. There is an inert truth underlying all of them; the laughter does come from trying to be witty but because my audience recognizes that truth in their own life. I'll use the ninja one as an example. We've all faced some insurmountable obstacle that must be taken on in the moment and if we stop to over think it, it will kill us (metaphorically most times but sometimes literally). There is no "joke" there, simply the honest laugh that comes when an audience empathizes.
Second, I see comics as works of art. It is entertainment at it's highest form. You'll often see comics poorly or incompletely drawn because the cartoonist only needs a stage for his funny caption. I try to create a complete image so that this becomes a real world for the reader's imagination. The thing that gives my strip readability is that it's like a photograph into a different reality. It's appealing to the eye. After one sees the initial image there's more for them to see and explore. There are unanswered questions that give the subconscious room to create it's own story. Again, I'll site the ninja strip. The two are fighting at night in open field. The brain begins to fill the details, they've stumbled across each other while the ninja was on a journey. The mountain must be the beasts' home. Any second now the creature's joey will pop out and run around. It is that fact that it is art that make my fans and I come back to view these panels time and again."
If you still don't "get" it, maybe it is because you are expecting this comic to be something that it is not. In this kind of cartoon there is no obsequious, observable punchline. Rather, the joy comes in the digestion of the images and concepts as a whole. You will see in these strips only what you bring in with you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
I hate to comment twice in a week, but this is a brilliantly written letter. One of the reasons I've always liked your comic is fairly self-centered: I've almost always "gotten" it. That 'like,' therefore, is as much about me, I suppose, as it is about you.
A lot of your comics remind me of Buddhist koans. Koans are/were statements/answers that senior monks would say to apprentice monks to get them closer to the truth or enlightenment. One of the 'answers' I read in college - a koan - was quite literally this: "Ha!" That was the answer to a question an apprentice monk asked a senior monk regarding enlightenment. Ever since then, I have found things like coincidence, the universal, the tragic, the divine, and the images or phrases that can tie them all together humorous. It is probably why I find most things in psychology delightfully humorous -- there can be (and likely is) derivative meaning in everything; as soon as a person opens him/herself up to his/her subjective experience of the derivative (that is, usually, the primitive/universal that underlies all experiences), a person cannot help but delight in it. And this is why, too, I agree with your assessment that 'jokes' are cheap. Real humor comes from something broader, deeper, more tragic and more divine than that.
Besides 'getting' what you mean, I also - as you must know by now - value your expert writing of your explanation. Quite simply put, it's always fairly winning, in my opinion, to see such cogent method behind the madness, as it were. You're smart.
Did the editor respond at all? Also, what comics had s/he seen?
--you probably know who. the non-mother other.
Post a Comment