Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3296 to 3300 (29 August - 02 September 2016)
mikmaxs:
--- Quote from: Tova on 31 Aug 2016, 21:34 ---But how do you know when you haven't seen it?
There is nothing of anything significance in the comic you didn't see that can't be very simply inferred from reading today's comic.
--- End quote ---
A rule of thumb I use for comedy: You want the audience to do as little thinking as possible, unless their confusion is the point of the joke. The space between humor and understanding the humor should be almost nonexistent. That's why explaining a joke kills it: By the time they understand the punchline, it's taken so long to get there that it's no longer funny.
So, if your reader needs to spend time figuring out what happened and making guesses (which could be wrong) about context, you're taking them out of the moment and spoiling the joke. The line at the end about the concussion would still work, because the point is to make the reader go, "Wait, what?", but by the time someone gets to the end of the comic, they've spent so much time inferring things through context that the punchline feels like just another piece of information that needs to be inferred through context.
Missing th setup kills the joke because it makes the punchline indistinguishable from the setup.
Tova:
I still don't see how it is so difficult to understand what they are talking about in any of the panels. It is pretty obvious, sorry.
(click to show/hide)MARIGOLD AND DALE WERE HAVING AWKWARD SEX.
Don't have time to debate further. The joke obviously didn't work for you, you can't win them all.
A better rule of thumb: comedy works better when you let the audience join the dots instead of overexplaining it.
Edit:
--- Quote from: mikmaxs on 31 Aug 2016, 21:41 ---A rule of thumb I use for comedy: You want the audience to do as little thinking as possible, unless their confusion is the point of the joke. The space between humor and understanding the humor should be almost nonexistent. That's why explaining a joke kills it: By the time they understand the punchline, it's taken so long to get there that it's no longer funny.
--- End quote ---
I can't agree. I've had countless experiences when I've had to stop and think about visual joke for more than a few moments, that were absolutely hilarious when realisation finally hit.
The reason explaining the joke doesn't work has nothing to do with the amount of time taken to get to the punchline, and everything to do with the audience no longer being able to mentally join the dots themselves, a crucial component to the humour.
Really am done now.
brasca:
--- Quote from: Tova on 31 Aug 2016, 21:48 ---I still don't see how it is so difficult to understand what they are talking about in any of the panels. It is pretty obvious, sorry.
(click to show/hide)MARIGOLD AND DALE WERE HAVING AWKWARD SEX.
Don't have time to debate further. The joke obviously didn't work for you, you can't win them all.
A better rule of thumb: comedy works better when you let the audience join the dots instead of overexplaining it.
--- End quote ---
(click to show/hide)So is Patreon like Slipshine? David Willis introduced me to that and I have not been disappointed. :wink:
ihaveavoice:
--- Quote from: mikmaxs on 31 Aug 2016, 21:31 ---I'm going to add real quick that it's entirely possible, if not likely, that Jeph did this entirely by accident. Chances are, he just thought, "Hey, this would be a funny follow-up strip to my Patreon comic," wrote it, and published it the same as he does every other comic, without considering how it might read to a casual audience. It seems unlikely that this is a pure "Lookit-my-patreon!" Ad comic.
--- Quote from: Tova on 31 Aug 2016, 21:29 ---I could tell you right now everything that happened in the comic you didn't see.
I guarantee you wouldn't suddenly find today's comic funny.
--- End quote ---
Well, after the fact? Yeah, probably. If I had known it in advance, though? I doubt it.
--- End quote ---
He wrote that it was a reference to the Patreon strip in the subtext at the bottom of the comic. I didn't even know there was a Patreon strip and had just assumed it was a noodle incident, basically, until I read that. If he hadn't written that, everyone would just either be like "ok, noodle incident" or "lol inside joke." Btw, reading "what Marigold was yelling about" makes me kiiiinda :-\ about whatever happened in that strip - I hadn't assumed she was actually literally yelling at him for something he did.
Kugai:
I think there are some things you shouldn't be interfering with or interrupting there May.
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