Mutts 3-Panel Meta

Patrick McDonnell, the creator of Mutts, has played with comic strip conventions before. The week of December 3-8, 2018 he riffed on a core concept of the art.

Daily humor strips usually have three panels. The first sets up the premise. The middle establishes the pattern. The third upends the pattern with the punchline.

In the sequence below, note how each daily strip plays with a different aspect of this convention.

In the first strip, McDonnell brings to our attention that, while each panel may look identical, each represents a different moment in time. The characters move from the second to the third panel because time has passed.

In the second sequence, McDonnell further explores this concept. The background to all three panels is identical, each representing the same scene in a different moment. Mooch refuses to leave the first panel, so he's absent from the second. Earl does the same in the second, so the third panel is empty. The humor derives from characters willing themselves out of the sequence.

The third sequence further develops the concept. Here, Earl remains in all three panels. Mooch however, disappears from the sequence.

The fourth sequence presents another variant. First neither characters stayed in the timeline through all three panels. Then Earl stayed. Now both appear in the last panel. But Mooch still opted out of the timeline in the second panel. So where did he go?

Note the changes in the fifth sequence. Here the landscape spans all three panels. So each panel still represents a different moment, but now also a different location. McDonnell places Mooth and Earl's word balloon across panels one and two. And Earl isn't in the second panel -- he's calling from the third. Here, the humor plays on the function of that last panel.

The final sequence also plays on the role of the last panel. The bear (the punchline) arrives too soon.

For those interested in the art of sequential art, this week entertained on several levels.

Mutts Goes Meta

During the week of May 21-26, 2018 cartoonist Patrick McDonnell stepped outside of his comic strip. Mutts spent the week contemplating the structure of the 3-panel gag strip -- as a way to deliver 3-panel gags.

The strip above addresses the pacing of the 3-panel gag. Many of the other strips for the week looked at different aspects of the structure - and most don't need additional commentary. 

The last of the sequence references Ernie Bushmiller. Bushmiller was the original artist/writer for Nancy. Bushmiller pared down his strip to its bare essence, and his tenure is one that most comic strip artists admire (including Patrick McDonnell, apparently).

And for a week of strips that looked at the foundation of the 3-panel form, it made perfect sense. 

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. 

Meta humor in the frame

All comic strip creators have tropes they return to again and again. If you need to come up with a gag every day for years on end, having a concept you can keep reinterpreting is a must.

One such concept for Mark Tatulli is the panel border. Every comic strip has black borders on every panel. It's part of the visual language and virtually invisible to most readers. In Lio, Tatulli brings the panel border to the forefront, and each time in a fresh and different way.

In the case of these strips from 2017, the borders become physical objects. You can tell by the way they appear bent around the damaged areas!

How many ways can a border panel be used? I don't think Tatulli is done yet.

And if the border is indeed a physical object, then it can change its appearance.

That's the tack Stephen Pastis took in a Pearls Before Swine strip from June 2017.


Two great examples from two master cartoonists.

Comical deconstruction

I always enjoy comic strips that step outside their allotted spaces to make fun of comic conventions. In this case, two very different comic strips offered humor based on comic strip pacing.

The first comes from a sequence of Barney & Clyde originally published 4/18/17.  This smartly-written (and drawn) strip by Gene Weingarten, Dan Weingarten, and David Clark has a long history of playing with comic strip conventions.

The second comes from the 2/5/17 Sunday edition of Beetle Bailey. From the outset, Mort Walker's strip was always a simple gag-a-day comic. Over the years, the strip has grown a little, though still within comfortable boundaries.

In both cases, the punchline arrives in the last panel -- which is also an integral part of the joke. It's interesting to me to see how the two creative teams handled the same concept. In Barney & Clyde, the punchline "you'll never know when you're in life's fourth panel" is humorous because, well, that's where it is.

At the same time, it's left unclear as to whether Cynthia and her teacher are aware that they're in a comic strip. That ambiguity also gives the line a little more weight.

I felt differently about Beetle Baily's take. There's nothing wrong with the joke itself, and it's certainly true. Comic strip (and animated characters) often hang in the air for an unrealistically long time for comic effect.

And yet, to me, this sequence just seems lazy. I suspect that if there had been an additional panel or two to fill, we would have seen Sarge and Beetle hang in the air even longer. I guess the difference is that Barney & Clyde use the observation to base the punchline one, while Beetle Bailey lets the observation be the punchline.

Lio's Border Patrol 2

The border panel is a fundamental design element of the comic strip -- so fundamental that it's all but invisible to most readers. Not to Mark Tatulli, creator of Lio. He often brings this hidden element to the fore in his innovative strip. Here are four recent examples, all featuring Eva Rose, the object of Lio's unrequited love.

 The sequence from 3/20/17 plays with convention in two ways. Usually, each panel represents a different moment in time. In this case, though, all three panels represent the same instant. The cannonball fired in panel one landed in panel three. The broken panels show the arc of the projectile. So instead of three traditional panels, we have a scene where the middle panel (room?) with two destroyed walls. But we still have a payoff for the gag in panel three.

 The second, from 3/7/17, retains the idea of each panel representing the same scene at a different moment in time. In this case, though, the bottom of the panel has changed function. Now it covers an (apparently) bottomless pit. Note that Tatulli's bottom border only extends halfway down the allotted space for the strip.

 The third example from 2/13/17 has a gag working on a number of levels. First, the entire strip is shown to be a flat surface that can be tied in a knot -- just as Eva Rose has tied Lio's heart in a knot. And though now tied, it also serves the role of a traditional three-panel sequence. In the first end is Lio, the middle (the knot), showing Eva Rose's action and Lio's emotion, and the third, Eva Rose walks away.

 Sometimes when Mark Tatulli has his comic spill over into another's he manages to fit both into his space (see: ). In this case, it's enough just to imply the action. Lio's mortar apparently exploded in the comic strip above it. I'm guessing the news flash defines "local" as the strips surrounding Lio.

 Four ingenious approaches to something most readers (and even comic artists) never seem to notice.

The Unsinkable Mark Trail

Mark Trail's current artist/writer James Allen has not only made this vintage strip more exciting visually, he's vastly improved the quality of the story lines. And along the way, he's also having some fun with the character and the very nature of adventure strips.

Normally, adventure strips are pretty much self-contained. What happened in previous story arcs are seldom referred to in the current adventure (with the exception of a recurring villain cropping back up). Current comic strip creative teams, such as Mike Curtis/Joe Staton (Dick Tracy), and Tony DePaul/Mike Manley (The Phantom), seem more interested in world-building. Borrowing from comic books, the past shapes the present rather than having each episode take place in isolation.

Which leads us the beginning of Mark Trail's Hawaii adventure (see Mark Trail Heats Up for more about this fall 2016 storyline).

Mark Trail has been invited to check out an invasive species of ants on a small island. He checks in with his editor while going to rent a boat.

Of course, that's exactly who Mark Trail is -- a guy in a serial comic. But his editor does have a point. Trail's two previous adventures involved exploding boats.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, this. 

Fortunately, Cal found an abandoned rowboat on the beach. There was plenty of foreshadowing -- Allen shows it being by the yacht that originally landed on the island and inadvertently left the invasive fire ants back in the prolog to the story (see: Mark Trail: Suddenly in the Past).

Allen continued the subplot about Mark Trail's luck with transportation with these two sequences.

Great art, great storytelling, and a sense of fun -- that's why I keep reading Mark Trail. Plus, I want to see what he blows up next.

Baldo Breaks Through

Usually when I write about a comic strip playing with the conventions of the medium, I'm talking about Lio or Barney & Clyde. But in this case, it's Baldo, by Hector D. Cantu and Carlos Castellanos.

The panel borders are part of the lexicon of the comic strip. So much so, that the reader just doesn't see them. Until they become part of the story, as they did in this June 19, 2016 Sunday sequence.

Baldo's father talk about using borders to protect his son is one most any parent in the real world would use. But with Baldo holding parts of the panel borders in his hand, the words have a double meaning (and set up the punch line).

Strange characters aren't just dangers out in the world -- they're the characters in the strips surrounding Baldo on the comics page.

A nice example of meta-humor.

Lio's Word Balloons

At the heart of the Lio strip that ran on 4/28/16 is a simple bit of word play. Mark Tatulli's gag uses two different meanings of the word " balloon" for the humorous payoff.

It works. But there's a little bit more to unpack here, because that's what makes this sequence even more enjoyable for serious comics fans.

First, understand that Lio is a strip in which no one talks. Or rather, a strip with no word balloons. so of course his word balloons are for sale -- they're useless in his strip.

Second, note that the customer contemplating Lio's wares is Nancy -- a character whose strip is dialogue-heavy. Nancy would definitely have a use for extra word balloons.

Third, note the variety of Lio's wares. And take a step back to realize that we intuitively know what these conventions mean. There are the traditional round balloons, with tails pointing in different directions. If two people are talking in the same panel, each balloon would have a tail going to a different speaker -- hence, you'd need both a right-pointing and a left-pointing word balloon.

See the spikey one? That indicates shouting, or a loud noise. The square one at the end is often used to depict emotionless or mechanical voice, like a robot, speakerphone, or computer navigation.

Comic readers know what these indicate, without ever consciously noticing the word balloon  at all. In this case, though, there are no words to distract us, and we're left to contemplate the shapes.

Well done!

Lio's Thin Black Line

There are many ways to play with the understood (and therefore unexamined) conventions of the comic strip genre. And it seems like Mark Tatulli is going to explore them all in his strip Lio.

In this 4/14/16 sequence, the gag depends on something the reader knows intuitively, but never thinks about:

Lio isn't a real person, and neither is his world. He's just a two-dimensional drawing. That's the punchline delivered by the final panel. We know it -- but we're seldom reminded of it.

Note what Tatulli does to get maximum effect out of his gag. In the first panel, Lio's stepping cautiously; the second, he's walking and happy; the third he's running and joyful. In emotion and motion, Lio's building momentum. So when in the fourth panel, he's not just motionless, he's been stopped cold and all that energy slams us into the panel.

And note that there is no fourth panel. Not really. Nothing exists in the infinite blankness of the page until the hand draws it. The end of the branch has been drawn, but the ground, and indeed the borders of the fourth panel haven't. So Lio's arrived in an area of the comic that's still under construction.

The gag is brilliant -- and it's the delivery that makes it so. And that's why I write these appreciations of the creator's artistry. Because like the conventions of the medium, they're often invisible.

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.)

Lio and the Family Circus 3

Lio creator Mark Tartulli is one of the newer generation of artists who seem to have a certain.. disdain for the venerable comic the Family Circus (see Lio and the Family Circus 1 and 2). And, as I've also noted, Tartulli likes to play with the fourth wall of the comic strip genre -- specifically, the outlines of the panel that generally go unnoticed by the reader (see: Lio and the Fourth Wall for other examples).

In his New Year's Eve strip for 2015, Tartulli brilliantly combined both. (click on image to enlarge)

It's what keeps me reading the funny pages.

Meta Humor in Sherman's Lagoon, Part 2

(Read Part 1 here)

 Leading up to the sequences presented today, I thought I knew where Jim Toomey was going with this week's "Sherman's Lagoon" continuity. Sherman and Hawthorne are talking about a cartoonist on the beach, a stand-in for Toomey who draws "Norman's Reef."

But then the strip took a strange turn, and it seemed to be no longer about being a cartoonist but about other careers a lazy shark might like. And then it came back to the start. Sort of.  (click on images to enlarge)

In this sequence, Toomey breaks the fourth wall and asserts his power (by turning Sherman into a hot dog.)

Then we seem to be moving into a story arc about different types of minimal-effort jobs.

Then we come back to the comic strip theme in a truly meta fashion. Not only are the characters aware that they're in a comic strip, but they show that they're not even fully finished (when they don't have to be).

And the sequence wraps up in the direction it was going in all along. Sherman eats the cartoonist, ending "Norman's Reef." Most newspaper story arcs begin on a Monday and end the following Friday or Saturday. This one began on a Friday, and finished a week later on Saturday. The extra time allowed for a plot twist or two, and Toomey delivered without ever letting the momentum lag.

There's a lot to unpack in this sequence, and to me, that's just part of the fun of being a comics reader.

Meta Humor in Sherman's Lagoon. Part 1

Jim Toomey's "Sherman's Lagoon" ran a sequence in late February 2015 that I found fascinating. In it, Sherman and Hawthorne observe a cartoonist on the beach. As I read each day's installment, I was lead in some unexpected directions. The first part seems pretty straight-forward. (click on images to enlarge).

It starts by playing off the misconception many have that comic art isn't "art."

In the second, we get a little taste of the meta. "Norman's Reef" is clearly an alternate version of the very strip the characters are living in.

The third seems a contemplation on the paradox of cartooning (and other creative work) -- solitary creation for mass consumption.

And the fourth continues riffing on the low status of the cartoonist.  Toomey seems to be speaking through his characters to comment (and make fun of) his occupation. And it appears that the cartonnist in question is, in fact, himself. But then something strange happened... (as you'll see in Part 2).

Meta Barney & Clyde 4

The creative team of Gene Weingarten, Dan Weingarten, and David Clark present an interesting concept in the February 8, 2014 sequence of their strip, Barney & Clyde. (click on image to enlarge) 

The strip occasionally has cameos from other comics (see: Meta Barney & Clyde). And now we know why -- those other strips aren't just on a different part of the newspaper. They're in alternate universes! It explains so much. Thanks, guys, for being so mindblowingly meta.

Blondie Cameo

Everybody knows that Blondie hasn't changed a bit. It's just another dead legacy strip. But everybody's wrong. Since the strip's introduction in 1930, Dagwood's gone from being a millionaire playboy to a married, white collar worker. Blondie's changed from a stay-at-home mom to a business woman running a successful catering business. Dagwood's gone from taking the bus to riding in a carpool. Instead of typewriters, his office uses desktop computers.

And the strip's not above using another fairly recent comic innovation -- the cameo.  In this case, there was no big announcement surrounding the July 1, 2014 sequence. Just this:

And really -- what else has to be said?

Except nothing like that would have run in the 1930's, or 40's, or 50's....

Meta Blondie

For years, Blondie has been the subject of ridicule by younger comic strip artists. Take a look at Meta Barney & Clyde 3, for example. There's a perception that some things never change in Blondie. Dagwood's always being clobbered by his boss, Dagwood always crashes into the mailman, Dagwood always creates gigantic sandwiches, etc.

But that's not really true. While the comic strip has settled into routines from time to time, it hasn't become frozen in its tropes like some other strips have. When Chic Young began the strip in 1930, Blondie was a dizzy blonde flapper who dated Dagwood, the scion of an upper class family. Over time, the focus changed.

Blondie and Dagwood were married, and his family disowned him (a convenient way to reboot the strip). By 1934 the strip had become a middle-class domestic comedy. Baby Dumpling was born in in the late 1930's -- he's now a teenager and is called by his given name, Alexander. Cookie, his younger sister came along in 1941. She's also now a teenager.

After Chic Young died in 1973, the writing chores were taken over by his son, Dean. And then things really began to change. Dagwood's office now uses computers instead of typewriters. He carpools instead of taking the bus. And more importantly, Blondie is no longer a housewife -- she runs a successful catering business.

Other supporting characters have been added, and now the strip has ventured into new territory. What exactly is the J.C. Dithers company where Dagwood works? His mishandling of contracts has been a source of comedy throughout the years, but contracts for what? Chic Young originally represented it as a construction company.

In the long-running movies (28 films between 1938-1950) starring  Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake, the Dithers company is an architectural firm.

Chances are any reader who began reading it after 1950 has only seen it referred to as J.C. Dithers Company. Which is what this recent sequence is all about.(click on image to enlarge)

Kudos for Dean Young and John Marshall for taking a meta look at Blondie.

Meta Foxtrot

I always enjoy comic strips that occasionally step back and take a look at comic strips. I've shared examples of comics breaking the fourth wall, cross-referencing each other, setting up a joke in one comic strip for a punchline delivered in another, and more.

Bill Amend, creator of Foxtrot carries the concept of metacognition to perhaps its logical conclusion. (click on image to enlarge)

So what's going on? Basically, you've just been given the standard outline for a typical comic strip sequence. Keep this outline in mind the next time you read a humor strip  and you'll see it at work. Changing the way we read comics by heightening our awareness? Now that's really meta.