The Ferrett's Second Theory Of Comic Writing: Penny Arcade Vs. Peanuts
What I did not do when writing Home on the Strange was notable by its absence. It was one of the hallmarks of my "normal" crazy essays, and one of the hallmarks of written humor in general… But I was blinded by the allure of doing things in the style of the classic comic strips.
See, Peanuts is one of my favorite strips, and it has a comfortable rhythm to it. And the rhythm is almost always the same:
Panel 1: Setup.
Panel 2: More Setup.
Panel 3: More Setup Still.
Panel 4: Punchline.
It's the classic method.* Doonesbury does the same thing, most days, and so does Garfield, and so does For Better or For Worse, and so does Zits: The punchline is in the final panel, and the other panels are merely setting the scene for it.
That's the stuff I was raised on… in comics. But the written and movie humor I loved was far different. I adored Airplane, a movie that was stuffed to the gill with gags wherever they could fit them in. And I loved Dave Barry, because every paragraph he wrote had at least two throwaway gags in addition to the main point.
The same could be said of Monty Python, or any number of other media darlings I adored: they were stuffed to the gills with as many gags as they could possibly throw in. But for Home on the Strange, I was still mired in that ol' standard of getting to the one punchline and calling it a day, because that's what Charles Schulz did.
It wasn't until, once again, I looked more closely at what I liked that I began to realize my mistake. Something Positive, that old stalwart, often has so much dialogue that it's a struggle to cram it in the same frame as the art, but the characters are usually providing two or three giggles before you get to the final panel. In Friday's strip, Penny Arcade manages to provide a solid gag in every single panel – a feat that is amazing.
The more I looked around at the newer comics that I really liked – PartiallyClips, Sheldon, The Order of the Stick – the more I realized that their goal seemed to be to cram as many funnies in as possible.
I felt embarrassed for not realizing this sooner. After all, that's what I do when I write humor essays – try to find as many whacky gags as possible. But for some reason, I was still mired in a 1970s paradigm.
Which is why starting with last week's strips (the "Trailer Hitch" storyline), I tried to throw in two or three funny bits per strip (the best being Blue Kryptonite, which has an idea I dearly love). And today's strip ("Animal Control, Part 1") has no less than four punchlines, along with some banter to ease the transition.
You'd think that I would have known instinctively that the new medium of a Webcomic requires it to be stuffed like a pepper with the funniness. But I was trying to recreate something that was nearly a dinosaur when I was reading it, and that didn't work as well now.
As with all things, we live and learn. There are things I've done right with Home on the Strange, natch; I'm happy with the character development, and the pacing as a whole, and the general plotline. But with every day, I learn something new.
Frankly, I find that kind of neat.
* - There are those who would argue that the classic method doesn't apply to certain classic strips like Krazy Kat and L'il Abner, and I can't disagree. But those weren't the strips that seized the public imagination back in the 1960s and 1970s, and as such they're not what I think of as "classic" when I harken back to the days of my childhood.
Remember, kids, the best Doctor Who was the one you first watched as a child. The Golden Era of comics were when you first started reading them. And the best music was the stuff you really dug when you were going to college. It's not fair, but it is the way of things.
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