Pile of Secrets

shittywebcomics:

Most jokes, have a fairly normal situation with one wacky thing as a twist.

Getting the balance of “silly” and “serious” right is very difficult, and something a lot of newer artists trying to be funny fail at. I recently rewatched Airplane!, which is the best example of this. The plot of the movie is 100% serious (and is, in fact, adapted from a drama called Zero Hour!). A joke enters the serious situation. A joke leaves. The situation returns to being serious. A new joke enters. Repeat. It’s considered a wacky zany comedy because this pattern repeats itself very fast, but that’s the pattern it sticks to. There are almost never two silly things happening in Airplane! at the same time, because then it would get too messy.

Most newer webcomic artists/internet people lean too heavily on the silly side. The jokes are what make you laugh, so the importance of a serious (or at least reasonable) framework for them is neglected.

However, Jeph Jacques has introduced us to a new way of failing at telling a joke: Instead of showing Marigold breaking out in hives and taking drugs, we have Momo telling us that the wacky thing happened. But the wacky thing is the joke! It’s not a good joke, but still.The proper way to tell this joke would be to show Marigold breaking out in hives, and show her taking medicine. And then maybe introduce a wacky twist, like she took Ambien by mistake, or two much antihistamine. Preferably, while doing this, we could also include more jokes, like funny dialouge. That way, the story would be building momentum while being funny (or “funny”, but I’m only talking about structure). Maybe she takes the drugs today, and is fine in tomorrow’s strip, and the date progresses for a bit, and thenthe drugs take effect. We could build tension waiting for the “Oh no Marigold took some drugs” shoe to drop, and pay off for it with some kind of high jink, like her going to the bathroom and passing out in the stall, leading to confusion and misunderstanding. Or her throwing up on him. Or passing out next to him on a bus to the restaurant and her head slams into his balls. Perhaps we could spend more than two seconds planning this out and come up with something better than Ow my balls (which would still be better than this). 

“I took drugs before a big date, and now I’m sick” isn’t a joke, though. It’s a setup. You could write a week-long scene where she gets progressively more out of it while refusing to admit a problem because she’s so nervous about the date, building more and more momentum with each strip until a big gag at the end. I’ve seen lots of comedies where something goes wrong leading into a big date and whole scenes evolve naturally from that. It’s kind of a cliche! But by simply having Momo state “She accidentally took some drugs, now she’s sick”, absolutely nothing will come of it. Not only does the momentum of this idea die before we can get a week’s worth of strips out of it, it dies before the comic ends! The “punchline” is in panel 3, and then has to be repeated in panel 4.

This isn’t a joke, this is Jeph Jacques punting on the date idea.