RE: Comics! #46 [Humor]

   

Gregg Schigiel: Welcome back, Stephen. I hope Jermaine and I held the fort in good stead whilst you were away.

So, in the past few weeks we’ve gone down some...heavier roads and gotten into discussions that have maybe “poked the bear”, as it were. So I thought we’d maybe turn things around a bit and maybe lighten things up with this week’s topic: Funny Books! Specifically I’m talking about humor and comedy in comics.

Way back when at the dawn of the comic book, they were merely collections of existing strips from the newspaper “funny pages”. Over time there have been many iterations of humor books out there, from funny animal books to humor magazines like MAD or CRACKED, etc., to today with things like G-MAN and TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE, and into the future with the quietly announced last year but as yet unseen or discussed COMEDY DEATH RAY COMICS anthology series.

So to start, as we often do, generally speaking: what have you liked and what do you like on the funny book front?

 

Stephen Mayer: This is such an oddly subjective topic (as if so many [almost all] of the discussions we have aren’t).

It’s not uncommon for people to walk in off the street and ask for “funny books”. Once you work through if they’re looking for comics in general (like, “see you in the funny books”), or comic strips (like the funny pages in the paper), or just a book that will make them chuckle, it’s still such a broad stroke to recommend anything. Humor is just one of those things that’s so broad, I think even larger that superheroes.

Recently I was looking at actor Mike O’Malley’s filmography (I think because of his guest spots on Parenthood) and I was shocked that his show Yes, Dear had 122 episodes! I probably only ever saw a handful of those, but I wasn’t that impressed with what I did see. Obviously somebody thought it was funny, cause it got 6 seasons. At the same time I think it’s a crime that Undeclared or Freaks and Geeks got canned after one season.

The same could be said for comics. Eric Powell said in one of the GOON trade paperbacks that he thought his spin-off one-shot SATAN’S $@#%* BABY was the funniest thing he’s ever written, and at the same time some folks in Alabama disagreed so whole-heartedly that they promised eternal damnation on area stores if they carried the book.

But to the question you posed, what do I find funny, I was a huge fan of MINI MARVELS, even before I met and became friends with Chris. I think the humor in his strips worked on so many levels, for comic fans, for kids, and even in a darker place. There was a panel that always comes to mind in the story when Hawkeye was trying to get in on everyone else’s powers. He thinks that Wolverine’s claws were in his gloves, so he had Logan give him one so he could try them. When the “claws” didn’t pop out, Hawkeye held the gauntlet directly up to his eyes so he could look in the holes. The disconnect of the reader knowing he wasn’t in danger but Clint throwing caution to the wind in the hopes of discovering the secret of these knives that pop out super fast was great.

I also really enjoy the more madcap antics of the TINY TITANS a lot. Aw yeah, Art. Aw yeah, Franco.

BIZARRO WORLD and BIZARRO COMICS from DC are probably my two favorite anthologies of all time.

You mentioned Mad Magazine early and that’s one humor publication that I never got into, even as a kid. It was always on the rack at the grocery store with X-Men and stuff and I tried it a few times, but I never liked the art or the jokes.

What about you? 

 

Gregg: Comedy and what people find funny is super-subjective, absolutely. Dave Chappelle, Dane Cook and David Cross, despite the same initials, get very different reactions depending on who you’re talking to. But we’re talking comics, not comics, so I’ll stick to comics (at least until I decide to mention other comics).

To be fair, Mad Magazine’s not quite what it once was, but I remember as a kid reading collections of Al Jaffee work and actually laughing out loud at things he did. But Mad has a certain point of view and approach that - as we’ve said and I’ll try not to repeat it too much - might not be for everyone. But in the same spirit of Mad you get into things like WHAT THE?! or NOT BRAND ECCH!, which were more comics-centric in their parodies.

Absolutely, Chris kills it every time, whether on his Bullpen Bits strips way back when, Mini Marvels, or G-MAN, which might even be finnier BECAUSE it doesn’t riff off what might already be familiar. Our pal Jacob puts in some nice bits of business in his MIGHTY SKULLBOY ARMY stuff. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Brian “Smitty” Smith and his surreal, trippy, hilarious THE BASICS strip that primarily exists on his web site briansmithillustration.com.

Now that I’ve put all the plugs in for my friends, I’ll say to my measure, Kyle Baker’s the funny book maker to beat. His range is stupendous and his sense of pacing/timing jokes in print is amazing. People seem to think of him as having done PLASTIC MAN, which was great, but if you go back, WHY I HATE SATURN was great and funny in the way a good TV show is...and THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW is still one of the funniest comics I’ve ever read. And now what he does with THE BAKERS or his book SPECIAL FORCES...he’s amazing and can draw (the hand-drawn way (because these days he’s been doing a lot more digitally)) like nobody’s business.

And also at the top of the charts is Roger Langridge, who’s more well known for THE MUPPET SHOW COMIC, but his FRED THE CLOWN and other works from before he “broke big” are tremendous. And he’s also very varied in his styles and approaches; which is what’s made his Muppet Show stuff work, it’s got that variety show feel.

And then of course there are SIMPSONS COMICS, which I read for a while and I’d say were funny. And there’s a lighthearted though maybe goofy appeal to Archie and Harvey comics.

While maybe not a “humor comic” by traditional standards, Mike Mignola’s THE AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD stands out to me. And I’ve not read it in ages but seeing it on my shelf I’m remembering Scott McCloud’s THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN being pretty funny. Evan Dorkin’s work, especially DORK, was always funny to me. As was Jay Stephens’ ODDVILLE and JETCAT and the other strips/stories he did.

 

So as to not leave out superhero-humor books (because it appears my humor tastes steer less towards the superhero parody type thing (which I tend to find fun and clever, but not always funny, if that makes sense). Joe Kelly’s DEADPOOL was funny. But outside of that, I’ve not read enough of the Giffen-DeMatties JUSTICE LEAGUE or John Byrne’s SHE-HULK, which are often cited by people as “classic” funny takes on superheroes. I have a passing familiarity with The Flaming Carrot and Mystery Men. But I’ve never read AMBUSH BUG, which I know people love.

Has there been anything lately along the lines of those books, JUSTICE LEAGUE, SHE-HULK and DEADPOOL that go four laughs as the primary objective without necessarily being parody? GLA is the only thing that comes to mind, in as far as mainstream stuff goes. Maybe on some level the recently ended run on POWER GIRL, maybe (though was it funny or just fun and big and comic-booky?). There’s definitely humor in the all-ages or kid-friendly books with TINY TITANS, FRANKLIN RICHARDS and that kind of thing. It’s almost for a book to be considered all-ages or kid friendly it has to be funny. I certainly saw reviews/reactions to X-Babies surprised it wasn’t funnier and by extension more kid-friendly.

It’s curious how where comedy is so big on TV and in movies and pop culture overall, it’s not as prevalent in comics, right? Do we as comic readers/fans maybe take this stuff too seriously? I’d like to think there’s a way to have it all. On TV things like The Office or Modern Family or this new show, The Good Guys, to some degree, do it. And in movies we get Hot Fuzz, Pineapple Express and Zombieland, all great action comedies.

Is JACK OF FABLES our comics-equivalent or are there other and/or better examples? Or if we want funny genre stuff we’re reading all-ages comics (though there are the more grown-up things like the aforementioned THRIZZLE or stuff by Johnny Ryan, etc)? 

 

Stephen: SCREW-ON HEAD was fantastic.

I read the bulk of Giffen and DeMattias' JUSTICE LEAGUE and I think that they weren't necessarily doing bits and gags, but more of a general sense that they were b-listers and as a result they didn't always realize the gravity of their situation and therefore they were able to walk through things with a lighter air. Another semi-recent book that I think really got that job done was Dan Slott's run on SHE-HULK, which had an almost Harvey Birdman feel in that it took the inherent nature of time-honored characters and literally put it on trial for laughs and dramatic effect. I would go so far as to say that Umbrella Academy is the same way in a more sarcastic or morbid sense.

I do think that the core of comic readers don't want their books to be funny. Fox example, there's a customer here at the store that's a diehard Avengers fan and still holds a grudge against Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen for NEXTWAVE: AGENTS OF H.A.T.E. due to the new direction that book brought to Captain Marvel/Photon and Machine Man. Even though it was obviously hard satire of the Marvel U. he couldn’t get over that vibe. 

 

Gregg: I’m not suggesting humor has to be specifically bits and gags, but a lighter, jokier tone overall. No one’s suggesting that sketch comedy and stand-up comedy can’t both be comedy, so parody comics and gag comics and sit-comics, for lack of a better word, would all be funny comics.

And satire (re: NEXTWAVE) is something that doesn’t always go over. I thought X-BABIES was quite satirical and as yet very few people seem to have read it as such...maybe because it wasn’t the same kind of satire or humor that’s been in past X-Babies stories?

And I notice it at conventions where I can lean a bit on a sarcastic remark here or there, or more likely feign a degree of ignorance in pursuit of a laugh (even if it’s just to get whoever sitting next to me, usually Jacob and/or Chris) - for example, referring regularly to Rorschach as Rorshark - more than a few people correct me or think I’m kind of an idiot.

But I guess it goes back to comedy being subjective on that end.

Even so, it’s a curious thing when, and I’m making a generalization here, it appears folks LIKE comedy when it’s inside-jokey type stuff, like PVP or the aforementioned Ambush Bug stuff...and people seem to expect humor in all-ages comics...but if something’s “in continuity” and “counts”, it better not be funny or jokey. I mean, all the books we’ve mentioned, particularly any of those in the past 10 years, haven’t had much by way of long life or breakout success (except for DEADPOOL, I suppose, and even that took a while because his original series in the late ‘90s didn’t set the charts on fire).

Would it be too big a statement to suggest comics fans need to lighten up?

We’ve talked about before, but it’s like we for so long have tried to run away from the “comics are for kids” and “comics aren’t the ‘60s Batman TV series” that any hint of that in comics (that aren’t for kids or directly mocking comics as parody) is no good.

So here’s a hypothetical: people seem to like TINY TITANS a bunch, children and adults like it and I’ve heard it used as an example of “there should be more of this” with respect to all-ages comics. Supposing Balthazar and Franco were put on the “real” Titans series...maybe with art by some well-regarded artist...but the tone remained as it is in TINY, so the stories are shorter vignettes that all loosely connect in each issue...and maybe there are more fights than classroom scenes or something...admittedly I’m not painting a thorough picture here, but basically if you take a writing team that people seem to like their humor work...and put them on a mainstream title to do a similar thing, do people accept that and enjoy it the same way or does it get rejected out of hand because, again, it’s the “real” title and “there’s nothing funny about this stuff!”?

Even reading some of the reactions online to this new Green Hornet trailer (and even the rumors and news leading up to it) seems to fall in line...so much fear and worry that it’d be done as a comedy and not take it seriously.

Now I’m imagining a Hawkman movie as essentially a Night at the Museum type deal, where a museum worker puts on this ancient hawk gear to deal with museum wackiness. And I’m not saying I’d see that movie - I haven’t seen any of the Night at the Museum movies - but they sure appealed to a lot of people out there in the world...but I’m thinking comics fan would lose their minds! 

 

Stephen: I just started reading a Kyle Baker interview this weekend from DRAW! Magazine #12 (Spring 2006 amidst NAT TURNER and PLASTIC MAN) and he had a quote in there that I felt applied really well to what we're talking about: 

“Well, what I find interesting is, if I go to a party, or I'm in a group of people, and they find out that I do comics or animation, everybody always thinks, "Wow, that's a really cool thing." And when you show them something they don't have so many prejudgements. You know, in comics, we bring our own sort of prejudices to the thing. "Does this relate to Jack Kirby Fantastic Four or not? Is this in continuity?" That whole side of things. But the average person, who's not into all the minutiae of fandom and what begat what and everything, it's interesting to get their viewpoint on things, because they're much more open to different subjects, to different styles. They don't have as much prejudice or baggage to bring to the subject.”

To your other point, taking popular all-ages creators and putting them on mainstream titles in hopes of garnering more wide-spread acceptance, I think they're already doing that in places and it's not working out super well. Art and Franco took over BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM from Mike Kunkel with Mike Norton jumping on art duties giving it a fun, gorgeous version of what I consider the DC house style. It's not in DC continuity per-se, but they're doing things with the characters that are completely innovative and ground-breaking and self-proclaimed Big Red Cheese fans aren't there to see it. And Captain Marvel didn't even come from DC continuity to begin with! Even going back to SHAZAM AND THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL by Jeff Smith, which wasn't even completely all-ages material and is in continuity with MAGIC OF SHAZAM, DC took the biggest all-ages creator of the last 20 years and gave him a shot in the much beloved prestige format and people weren't there for it, at least not at Acme.

Marvel's working on the same idea right now with THOR: THE MIGHTY AVENGER, bringing Roger Langridge over from his success on the MUPPET SHOW and giving him a chance to re-imagine the god of thunder with Chris Samnee. They're not even soliciting the book with the Marvel Adventures titles, but customers are already assuming that because it's all-ages, it's just for kids.

In your specific example of Art and Franco on the mainstream TEEN TITANS monthly, I think they could pull it off if they got to really cut loose once in a while the way the TEEN TITANS cartoon did. There was a warning on that show whether viewers realized it or not. Episodes with the English version of the theme song with gonna be hard continuity and more dramatic or action-packed; episodes with the Japanese version meant all bets were off and things were going to be sillier. But I don't think a mainstream audience would hip to that kind of distinction the same way JUSTICE LEAGUE always faired better than TEEN TITANS when they were airing. 

Gregg: There’s a reason why Kyle Baker is the “The Greatest Cartoonist of All Time!”…he knows of what he speaks. 

Your examples using POWER OF SHAZAM and MIGHTY AVENGER just support what I’m saying (and what Baker said); comics fans want/need their superhero comics to “fit in” and “matter” with respect to the overall continuity and history. Granted, we have no specific data to prove this, but the circumstantial evidence is all there. Stepping out of the humor conversation, as good as a What If? or Elseworlds story is, it becomes REALLY good if it becomes part of the respective universe proper. But back to humor: SHAZAM and MIGHTY aren’t even humor books! (at least as far as we know having as yet not seen the latter)

And at this point the marketing/sales mechanisms are what they are to the point that if DC put out a series, hypothetically, called BATMAN COMICS, which was essentially a comics adaptation of the ‘60s series, fully camped out and jokey/silly…while that might have a greater appeal to people (as the show itself did; and apparently the adult film parody seems to), probably would fail for all kinds of reasons. 

It’s a similar thing that’s happening when people get bent out of shape that Twilight has a presence at Comic-Con, that “they don’t get it!” or “that’s not real”. Or to again borrow from Kyle Baker from a COMICS JOURNAL interview from January 2000:

“The weird thing about comics is that the formula is, if it works in the comic-book field, it will fail outside, and vice versa. I go in a comic-book store. A comic-book store is the only place you can’t sell Garfield books. And I’m not saying Garfield’s great, but Garfield sells a million copies every time. Garfield’s a hit. Garfield is in every paper. It’s all over the world. Everybody else, every other book store, Barnes and Noble, Garfield is what pays for their humor section in the bookstore. And you go into a comic-book store, and you say, ‘Hey, are you selling a lot of Garfield books?’ and ‘Ah, no, man, we can’t get rid of those.’”

Our good pal Chris Giarrusso, for his new printings of his G-MAN digests, will not have “humor” listed on the book as one of its categories because as we’ve all heard and seen for so long over the past so many years, “humor doesn’t sell”.

There appears to be a real disconnect between popular entertainment and comics, which I’d like to think could/should/might be popular entertainment. And in this instance we’re just exploring the humor/comedy side. And what’s interesting, to that point, is when a comedian that’s considered popular even in comics circles writes a comic, it doesn’t light up the sales charts. Seth Meyers and Bill Hader wrote that Spider-Man “Short Halloween” one-shot. And despite Saturday Night Live riding a popularity high it hasn’t seen in years, did it do any better than a regular Spider-Man book? Patton Oswalt’s comics aren’t always necessarily humor books, but what about THE LAST CHRISTMAS by Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan? There was a humor book, written by a legit comedian with comics cred…and I’m not talking about these folks bringing in new readers, I’m saying existing readers who like comics and like comedy and maybe even like that specific comedian…how come that book wasn’t a huge hit?

Because it didn’t feature a popular character (like say, Santa Claus)? It wasn’t by name creators (Rick Remender and a TV Actor)? It wasn’t a genre story (featuring guns, violence, or the ever-popular zombies!)? Or because it wasn’t “in-universe” (whichever universe you choose: Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Whedon, etc) and didn’t affect the tapestry/soap opera that we’ve all been following for so long?

And I’m not suggesting an Iron Fist series should be a Stephen Chow-esque action-comedy (though come on, that’d be sweet!) or that Batman should be cracking one-liners all the time…but it’s a shame that the existing comics audience aren’t more open to things being funny that DON’T feature an ape, which, apparently, is the only thing people seem to accept as funny in comics (and I submit that bears are funnier than monkeys – and to that end I endorse SEA BEAR & GRIZZLY SHARK, the recent one-shot by Ryan Ottley and Jason Howard from Image – it’s funny, has great art, and is a fun, entertaining comic book; and with 48 pages of comics at $4.99 it’s cheaper, per page, than any $2.99 or $3.99 book out there).

In the same way I was telling Jermaine last week that Batman: The Animated Series and Batman: The Brave & The Bold CAN coexist, so too can traditional “real” superhero comics and comics that are comical, superhero or otherwise. 

Right? 

Stephen: I can't speak to WHAT IFs as much as ELSEWORLDS, but I think some people do care that they're outside of mainstream continuity. After INFINITE CRISIS when everything got boiled down to 52 worlds, a lot of people were upset that various Elseworlds were designated part of the lasting 52 and brought back into the spotlight/toy box where anyone could play with them. The very idea of COUNTDOWN: ARENA where various Elseworlds versions of characters were lifted and forced to due battle resulting in pretty bloody endings for no reason was awful. 

Conversely, in the brief life of Bendis and Romita Jr.s new AVENGERS, several customers have expressed a desire to see the characters you worked on in the SECRET WARS epilogue What If as opposed to the Next Avengers of DVD fame.

I don't know if we have Garfield specifically, as Baker takes about in your quote, but we definitely carry CALVIN AND HOBBS, FARSIDE, and older stuff like LULU and NANCY, and the originals like YELLOW KID. It's all part of the comic tradition regardless of tone, and I think it should be represented in every comic shop in some fashion.

I won't speak for others, but in the instances that you mentioned with Myers and Hader's SPIDER-MAN: SHORT HALLOWEEN or Oswalt's dramatic work on the recent SERENITY: FLOAT OUT one-shot, despite them all beings funny guys that I'm a fan of, I didn't really enjoy their books (though I did buy them). This had more to do with the storytelling aspects than the tone, and that's to be expected because these guys don't write comics for a living. It's a giant rarity that anyone can just walk into the business and have a critically acclaimed hit. So yeah, from my point-of-view those just weren't great comics as compared to books that didn't work because of who wrote them or the tone of the story.

And as somebody that has the complete Batman: the Animated Series on his shelf right next to every volume of Batman: Brave and the Bold that's been released thus far, I absolutely agree that the serious stuff and humor stuff should be able to co-exist. I feel the same way about comics that I do about TV shows, we should embrace what's good regardless of whatever else.

Maybe that leads to a bigger battle from our side of the counter; "Not all trade paperbacks or hardcovers are graphic novels, but all original graphic novels are trade paperbacks or hardcovers (unless they're digital now." "Not all comics are for people of all ages, but all-ages books are for everyone, not just kids'" Semantics or a road block to higher sales, a wider audience, and more fun for everyone? 

Gregg: You might be right, Stephen, that it has to happen on the retail and grass roots levels, where boots on the ground have to directly point out the value of a comic that maybe doesn’t tie in or connect to the “big picture” stuff. Especially when people are so quick to complain about multi-part, multi-title crossovers and such. Take a break, folks, have a laugh. And if I can (somewhat ironically) borrow from Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight: Why so serious? 

 

Stephen Mayer makes his mama proud by buying his first piece of big boy furniture and running cable until all hours of the night.