The Sunday Funnies

Yesterday was my Dad's Birthday and I decided to pick him up three things he enjoyed. A six-pack of Genesee Beer was one of those things. And the other two were the collection of Popeye and Krazy Kat comic strips Fantagraphic Books put out.

These were two comics that both my Dad and myself love. With my Dad his Grandfather immigrated from West Prussia, so I think the faux German dialect amused him reading collections of the script growing up. He never really liked the character Popeye, however, until he saw the Robin Williams movie and gained an appreciation for the character from there.

Fantagraphic Books has done a terrific job re-releasing a great number of classic comic strips like Krazy Kat, Popeye and Pogo in these really gorgeously printed books. As much as they clean up the comics to make them legible, they leave a great deal of that smudgy inky beauty to the original artwork.

I think some of it because they can't help it and there's so much that technology can fix. But I would consider that to be a happy accident because I think leaving those blemishes enhances the work.

I was thumbing through both books yesterday. And there was just so much I loved about both the artwork and the stream-of-conscience style to the writing. What struck me most with the dailies, especially reading Popeye, was the lack of punchline.

This got me thinking about the whole thought process of comics. Where they were versus where they are now.

I suppose the best thing I can liken it to is sketch comedy. Sound weird? Well, let me explain. Through sketch comedy shows like Saturday Night Live, a great number of sketch comedy shows have gotten into two mindsets. 1.)The reoccurring character. 2.)The punchline.


Saturday Night Live is probably the most notorious for the Reoccurring Character Syndrome (we'll call it RCS for short). You have this character (or characters) that one of the cast members has a character that shows up practically every week. For example Cheri Oteri's SIMMAH DOWN lady. I have to say, I really hate that character. Then again, I can't stand Cheri Oteri. She just runs right up my spine.

This mindset might have started with the whole concept of the variety shows from the 50's and 60's where you would have a lot of that.

Monty Python's Flying Circus is the only sketch comedy show I feel that ever got the whole concept of sketch comedy right. They never had punchlines and very rarely did they have reoccurring characters.

Kids in the Hall is another good example of sketch comedy done very well. And strangely produced by SNL's big cheese Lorne Michaels. Michaels has often stated that Python was his influence for SNL but I feel like he got closer to Python with KITH.

KITH did have reoccurring character. But they were able to pull it off because you felt like the characters weren't created to be a walking talking catchphrase.

Somehow all sketch comedy has fallen into the trappings that to be a sketch comedy show you need reoccurring characters and a punchline.

And comic strips have fallen into a somewhat similar trap.

Since the days of EC Segar and George Herriman newspaper comics have slowly overtime gotten into this mindset much like sketch comedy. But with the strips it's each strip has to be a self-contained story and each strip has to have a funny joke at the end.

If you have read a Garfield strip in the past 20 years, you will find the punchline is anything but funny.

Reading the old Popeye strips from 1929, I found that each daily strip did not have a distinct punchline to them. From my point of view, the strips were treated like a part of the ongoing story. There's not the feeling of a drumbeat from a stand-up comedy act going on in my head when I would get to the end of the strip.

And I liked that. The strips had funny lines. But they weren't placed right at the end. I mean, with Popeye's debut the line I thought was the funniest was panel three when Popeye remarks "Ja thinks I'm a cowboy?" after Olive's scheming and diminutive brother Castor asks Popeye if he's a sailor.

And a lot of those strips are like that. The funny lines are littered throughout the strips and not just relegated to the last panel.

Krazy Kat is very much like that too. There's not a really funny punchline at the end. But the humor is with the faux German sounding dialogue written. I loved reading that when I grew up. And not only that the backgrounds are so surreal and constantly changing.

Which is a no-no with comics nowadays. Everything has to be linear and make sense. Like a cat that eats lasagna and spouts mental dialogue is realistic ;-)

But something changed along the way. Both with the inventiveness of the writing and with the quality of art. I still believe the last really great comic strip was Calvin and Hobbes.

Although Liberty Meadows is a great strip too. But I don't know many people who read newspaper strips anymore. I had to explain to my class one time what a newspaper comic was. Some knew but most didn't because most of the kids parents don't get the paper.

I don't want to immediately say comic strips are a dying art form. But again. I don't know many people who read the newspaper anymore. I don't. It's much easier to log onto Yahoo in the morning and look at the headlines for free.

But I think the medium of comics will continue with the internet. It's easy to start up a web blog and publish your series.

A cynic would immediately scoff at that because it doesn't pay. But the fact of the matter is that there's an audience for everything. You just need to find that audience.

And with all the publishing options out there, you can then collect your stuff into a collection.

Personally, I would love to see comics return to that very free form style of the early days much like I would love to see sketch comedy take a more non-punchline non-reoccurring character route.

But I suppose old habits are hard to break.