What Happened to the Comics? They're Not Funny Anymore

If you're like me, you often emerge from behind the Sunday comics page with a confused frown. Was that funny? Was it supposed to be funny? What school did some of these artists graduate from, and can we have it shut down?

Of course, in this incredibly meta society in which we live, someone's lack of funny invariably translate into someone else's experiment in humor. At Joe Mathelete Explains Today's Marmaduke, Joe offers his own interpretation of the comic's odd punchlines and sloppy aesthetic. In October 19th's comic, Marmaduke skateboards past a man, knocking him over, as the man quips "now I've seen everything."

Joe explains: "Marmaduke, who is skateboarding, knocks over a man in an ill-fitting suit who had previously seen everything but a skateboarding dog knocking him over." Some other explanations, which stand on their own: "Marmaduke stole his owner-man's car keys, which he used to steal his owner-man's van. Owner man is too busy wearing a fedora to realize this." "Marmaduke's hubris prevents him from conceding defeat to his echo." Over-simplifying the ridiculous scenarios that are the backbone of Marmaduke somehow makes them funny; just don't ask me to explain why.

Even more inexplicable is The Garfield Randomizer. It's what it sounds like: press a button, and you get three random Garfield cells in sequential order, as if they formed a strip. Many Garfield fans and naysayers have found the resulting comics much funnier than any original Jim Davis could be; the randomness results in high comedy.

Amateur artists on internet message boards have taken it a step further by plying their Photoshop skills on Garfield strips, adding "googly eyes," realistic cat faces, and adult humor to spice up the strip. One anonymous artist has even recreated Garfield strips with "Realfield," a drawing of a realistic cat replacing Garfield. Realfield's thought bubbles are invisible, and only Jon appears to be interacting with the cat, who remains stoic. A collection can be found here.

The man behind the "Arbuckle" strip invites people to reinvent Garfield comics with her own artwork, using only the script from an original comic. The owner of the site explains that, showing Garfield through Jon's eyes, "Garfield changes from being a comic about a sassy, corpulent feline, and becomes a compelling picture of a lonely, pathetic, delusional man who talks to his pets. Consider that Jon, according to Garfield canon, cannot hear his cat's thoughts. This is the world as he sees it. This is his story."

Members at the Something Awful forums, humor and general interest boards that boast over 100,000 register users, have plenty to say about comics. In this recent thread, they lambaste and Photoshop-alter comics like For Better or For Worse, Garfield (of course), Luann, and the radically liberal webcomic Minimum Security.

The FBOFW firefighter intensely exclaiming "some things just aren't worth dying for!", seen at the top of this thread, has become a popular catchphrase on the forums. One member apologetically created a Photoshopped comic with a storyline lifted from a previous FBOFW strip, involving a dog dying while rescuing a little girl. At the end of the altered strip, the firefighter pops in to make his suddenly inappropriate proclamation.

Finding the unintentional humor in things has always been a staple of human entertainment. Television shows like the cult hit "Mystery Science Theater 3000" earned a massive fan base just by making fun of incompetent films, and now the internet is doing the same for comic strips. Separating the wheat the from chaff is the most difficult part, but overall, maybe your Sunday afternoon is better spent crusing the 'net than trying to understand where Marmaduke got a king-size skateboard.