Meta Comics in May

Something very unusual happened May 10, 2018. Three different comic strips based their gags on comic strip conventions. And each used a different approach.

I've remarked on such meta-humor before, but they're usually isolated examples.

The first is from Bill Holbrook's On the Fastrack.

The first panel makes sense after you read the punchline. The word balloon is so common that -- as an object -- it's virtually invisible to the reader. Holbrook makes it a physical object in the first panel -- supported only by Deathany.

The next example was something of a surprise. I'm not a big fan of Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey. I find both the art and writing mundane.

In this case, though, there's some innovation. The characters know they're in a comic strip. If the second panel had stopped with Killer's comment, it would have been an adequate punchline. Zero's comment makes it better, as it builds on that. Killer points out that they can't read the strip that they're in. And Zero's comment goes a step further -- if they can't read the strip, then they certainly can't read the title above it. 

The last example comes from Mike Lester's Mike du Jour.

The week-long running gag is that the office snack cart operator has been hosting cooking segments. Treating panel borders as physical objects isn't new, but it's used seldom enough to be refreshing. 

And note that the hole Mike saws in the second panel is there in the third as well. All three panels show the same location at different times (in sequence, of course). If the panel borders were physical objects, then only the second one should have a hole. But since they're also boundaries of time, the third panel reproduces the damage of the second. 

Not every paper runs Non Sequiter above Mike Du Jour. I wonder if creator Wiley Miller talked with Mike Lester. The panel is funny enough by itself. The victim standing on the X is reading about what will happen to him. Bystanders are all looking skyward, which is where the sign indicates "what you never saw coming" will be coming from. 

But when you put the two strips together, then "what you never saw coming" actually seems to be coming up from below. So even the bystanders won't see "what you never saw coming."

I didn't see that coming when I opened up the paper May 10. 

Mike Du Jour Balloons

This is only the second time I've posted about Mike Lester's comic strip (see Mike Du Jour's cameo du jour), Mike Du Jour. I do read it --and enjoy it -- daily. For the most part, though, the strip's humor doesn't comment on the conventions of cartooning -- which is mostly what I comment about in this blog.

There are exceptions. In a story arc from January 2016, this sequence was published:

What makes the humor work? The fact that the characters inside the strip can see thought balloons -- just like the reader. It's a standard convention that the contents of thought balloons are only known to the character thinking them and the reader, just as word balloons represent conversations heard by the characters, and by convention are invisible to them.

This was a great sequence -- especially given the somewhat racy nature of the character's wish. Glad we don't live a comic strip! (At least, I don't think we do.)

Mike Du Jour's cameo du jour

Some newspaper comic strip artists make cameos a regular part of their repertoire -- such as Steven Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) and Mark Tatulli (Lio). Others do so occasionally, which sometimes make them even more effective. (see: cameos)

In an early September, 2014 sequence, Mike Lester did just that in his strip Mike Du Jour. Here's the sequence. (click on images to enlarge)

 There were two things I particularly liked about this story arc. First, the cameo was an unusual choice. Most comic strip cameos are familiar figures from Peanuts, Family Circus or other legacy strips. Earl of Brian Crane's Pickles isn't one of those.

Second, I love the way Lester references Crane's strip.

And of course, the primary focus of Lester's humor is about the T-shirt. The grandfather could be anyone and the jokes would have still worked. But making it a recognizable grandfather just added to the fun. At least for some of us.