Comedy in Graphic Novels

Definition

Humor is a vital component of comic books and graphic novels. From the medium's beginnings to the Modern Age, creators of both mainstream and underground works have used humor to deconstruct the genres in which they work, call attention to political or social issues, and entertain.

Introduction

The graphic novel and its attendant formats—comic strips, comic books, cartoon magazines, and picture books—display various comedic themes and strategies. In some respects, the graphic novel seems designed to generate or sustain what French philosopher Henri Bergson called the “reciprocal interference” between message and meaning, or intention and result, that drives comedy. The pacing of specific events, experiences, or environments across panels and pages, and especially within the carefully sculpted composition of each frame, hinges on a carefully deployed fusion of interdependent cues between the images, text, and reader—the same type of intimate, assumptive address that drives the gags and running jokes of many comedic forms. The graphic narrative’s humorous potential hinges on its energetic, telegraphic sequencing.

It is also crucial to consider that almost all forms of graphic narrative apply some element of visual simplification to their subjects. The simplified caricatures embedded in the narrative systems of comics are highly stylized, insistently inviting mini-comedies in and of themselves. The traces of style left by artists, inkers, and other designers in these predominantly drawn texts make the reading experience much more personal. Readers are constantly aware that someone has drafted these pleasant pictures. The more they learn to appreciate the artists’ arbitrary aesthetic choices, the more amicable and intimate their interpretations become, regardless of the content or subject matter. At the most fundamental narrative levels, there may be some truth in the old assumption that sequential art moves across “funny pages.”

Slapstick and Sequence

Physical humor and crisp, witty speech have been features of graphic novels from the medium’s earliest ancestors. Beginning with the 1842 comic The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, the comedic impact of interacting frames and captions often superseded concerns about continuity, plot, or visual polish. Other early comic strips such as Richard Outcault’s Yellow Kid, Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, George McManus’s Bringing up Father, or Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff also reveal how carefully early practitioners blocked their sight gags, deployed their scorching comebacks, and orchestrated their final “punch line” panels.

At the same time, these early works absorb or remediate the whole gamut of American comic traditions, especially silent film pantomime. Vaudevillian farce, blackface minstrelsy, and pioneer humor are evident in early graphic narratives such as George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, E. C. Segar’s Thimble Theater, Fontaine Fox’s Toonerville Trolley, and Milt Gross’s picture novel He Done Her Wrong. Even the notorious Tijuana bibles satisfied a common urge toward perverse desecration, depicting comic strip characters, movie stars, athletes, and other celebrities in rude, usually degrading scenes of pornography and violence. All of these comic strip ancestors have had a profound influence on the graphic novels of later decades.

Animal Antics and Kiddie Comedy

Funny animal or anthropomorphic graphic novels portray the generally humorous misadventures of personified animals in highly stylized situations. As original works or cross-marketed venues for film, television, or advertising personalities, such as Donald Duck, Snoopy, Garfield, Opus, and the Animaniacs, the funny animal genre ranks among the most enduring traditions in international comic art. The seminal works of early auteurs have been republished in ornate treasuries and compendia, creating new, novelesque contexts for an otherwise forgotten humor heritage. Archival collections of Krazy Kat, Carl Barks’s Disney comics, and Walt Kelly’s Pogo have revealed new perspectives on later works such as Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat or Art Spiegelman’s Maus.

Experiments with funny animal forms can lead to surprisingly philosophical meditations on humanity’s folly, as in Adam Sacks’s Salmon Doubts and Dave Sim’s Cerebus. In such cases, the allegorical implications of the funny animal conceit turn provocatively on the transmutation of human ethics and social constructions with the species-specific, instinctual behaviors of animals and their habitats. Several funny animal novels ingeniously manipulate reader expectations to emphasize comedy and suspense. Significant juvenile examples include Jeff Smith’s Bone epic and Andy Runton’s Owly graphic novels. David Petersen’s Mouse Guard and Frank Cammuso’s Maxx Hamm, Fairy Tale Detective offer equally hilarious preteen reading, while the moody, nearly mute multivolume works of European cartoonists such as Jason and Lewis Trondheim introduce darker comic fusions of violence, anxiety, and loneliness for adults.

Children’s comics also thrive outside anthropomorphic traditions, especially in the subtle worlds of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy and Marjorie Henderson Buell’s Little Lulu, which have been reprinted in collected volumes. Teen comedy remains a central theme in works such as IDW Publishing’s collections of Archie comics and Tania del Rio’s genre-bending Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Magic Revisited.

Parody in Tights

The superhero, defined by pride, courage, and strength, is especially ripe with comic potential. In fact, superhumor functions across a wide range. In its most faithful avatar, humor aids and abets the earnest superhero’s cause, providing heroes with extra defense against evil or another method of irritating their opponents. Thus, Spider-Man’s signature wisecracks, Hellboy’s workaday asides, and Wolverine’s one-liners are laced with a focalizing tension that allows the readers to feel the interior turbulence that makes the heroes’ psychologies so attractive. Yet, the tradition of heroic and villainous monologuing, in which one gloats over a vanquished foe, cries out for hubris-punishing humiliation and parodic retribution. Perhaps Cerebus’s and Gnatrat’s send-ups of comic creator Frank Miller’s ultramasculine interior monologues are the strongest examples of this leveling trend in Superbanter. Another rich vein of comedy arises from catty supergroup melodrama. In superhero soap operas such as Joss Whedon’s installments of Astonishing X-Men and J. M. DeMatteis, Keith Giffen, and Kevin Maguire’s outrageous Justice League International comics, superhero rivalry, romance, and righteousness mix into turbulent, deliciously superhuman explosions of frustration, pettiness, and hilarity.

Numerous villains link comedy with menace or insanity. Embracing humor as a weapon, cause, or gimmick, mad geniuses such as the Joker, Arcade, and Mr. Mxyzptlk trade on the subversive qualities of madness, nonsense, and anarchy to frustrate supposedly well-adjusted do-gooders with their sadistic, unfathomable enigmas. With its attendant themes of healing and growth, humor seems mainly to antagonize driven vigilantes and avengers such as Batman, the Spectre, and the Crow. Offbeat stories such as Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Elektra: Assassin and Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke include extended meditations on the ironic similarities between superheroic egos and schizophrenic lunacy. Such deconstructive superstores use humor poignantly to suggest the inherent contradictions and ethical limitations of caped crusading.

Superhero comedy is most rewarding when it self-reflexively plays upon the inherent absurdities of the genre. For example, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster’s superhero Funnyman rollicks through the traditions of Jewish American humor in a campy parody of Superman’s more ennobling origins. The relentless parody of heroes, fans, comics continuity, and creators themselves that drives Keith Giffen’s Ambush Bug and Don Simpson’s Megaton Man allow for comical revisions of the inner conflicts and grandiose combat that readers have come to expect from superhero stories. Similarly, fan-centered farces such as Garth Ennis and Doug Braithwaite’s The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe and more allusive parodies such as Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert’s Marvel 1602 toy knowingly with readers’ allegiance to the complex motivations and continuities of superhero multiverses.

Politics, Parody, and Perversity

Some of the most inventive humor in graphic novels is found in works published by small or independent presses. For example, series such as Eric Powell’s Goon have picked up gothic horror comedy where works such as Batton Lash’s Wolff and Byrd: Counselors of the Macabre left off. Terry Moore’s touching Strangers in Paradise and Alex Robinson’s melodrama Box Office Poison are realistic “dramedies” with comic tension reminiscent of the Hernandez brothers’ Love and Rockets. By contrast, Peter Bagge’s Everyone Is Stupid Except for Me, Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus and Shannon Wheeler’s Too Much Coffee Man present nearly surreal mixtures of oppositional humor and visual wit. Like many young humorists, these authors display the influence of MAD magazine pioneers such as Harvey Kurtzman, Sergio Aragonés, and Antonio Prohías, as well as underground satirists such as Crumb, Harvey Pekar, and Trina Robbins. Even more scathing political humor runs through Ted Rall’s Generalissimo El Busho, Jen Sorensen’s Slowpoke, and Michael Leunig’s Strange Creature.

Many lesser-known comedy works continue to surprise readers with their light-hearted ingenuity and amusing lyricism. These texts include Jennie Breeden’s The Devil’s Panties, Tom Beland’s True Story, Swear to God, and Ken Knudsten’s My Monkey’s Name is Jennifer. Experimental forms of abstract or absurdist comedy inform Chris Ware’s moody essays on hopelessness and failure, Jim Woodring’s nasty psychedelic fables, and David Mazzuchelli’s explorations of form in Asterios Polyp.

Impact

From comedic comic strips such as Charles Schulz’s Peanuts to absurd graphic novels such as Mazzuchelli’s Asterios Polyp, the forms of humor and amusement that march through cartoon and comic art are indeed legion. Scholars of graphic narrative have begun to examine how multijointed connections across the comics page establish various reader experiences. Still, the speed of Ignatz’s brick in Herriman’s Krazy Kat or the depths of outrage in Aaron McGruder, Kyle Baker, and Reginald Hudlin’s Birth of a Nation is tough to pigeonhole. There are, of course, plenty of irresponsible and even hateful graphic amusements that indulge in grotesque fantasies of misogynist or racist objectification—the currents of comedy are by nature reckless, raw, and frequently mean-spirited. In general, however, humor infuses itself into graphic novels with great enthusiasm across time and genre, and it would be exceedingly challenging to comprehend the merits of any small sampling without a twinge of laughter.

Bibliography

Corrigan, Robert. Comedy: Meaning and Form. New York, Harper, 1981.

"Funny Books: 15 Hilarious Comics Of The Last Decade." CBR, www.cbr.com/funniest-comics-of-last-decade. Accessed 17 July 2024.

Gabilliet, Jean-Paul. Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books. Translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

Hatfield, Charles. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2005.

Parker, Thayer Preece, and Christopher Raley. "15 Funniest The Far Side Comics About Animals, Ranked." CBR, 10 July 2024, www.cbr.com/best-far-side-comics-funny-animals-ranked. Accessed 17 July 2024.

"The Funniest Comic Book Superheroes." Ranker Comics, 23 June 2023, www.ranker.com/list/funny-superheroes/ranker-comics. Accessed 17 July 2024.

Ullery, Sarah. "19 Really Funny Comics and Graphic Novels." Book Riot, 13 Aug. 2019, bookriot.com/funniest-comics. Accessed 17 July 2024.