What type of humor do most artist go for in their comics? Humor by nonsense speech that doesn't make sense? Humor by poking fun of other creators' work - e.g. Star Wars parody? Humor on vulgar stuffs? Or action humor like Jackie Chan?

Well, for me, I:

- exaggerate stereotypes to the max
- have word play
- sometimes putting the most unexpected thing out
- insert nonsense speech is used sometimes


But humour depends on the genre I think

Everyday conversation humor. Stuff that's only funny once and only between friends. When I write something, that's what I try to show. Down to earthness.

That, and futuristic events humor. Having control of the timeline is fun.

.: Myxomatosis :.

I run a dark fantasy epic, when humor ends up getting into it I tend to opt for a sort of Clockwork Orange-esque type humor. There are also going to be instances of surreality where I'll draw something absolutley absurd but that fits into the storyline.

When I'm doing actual humor comics I tend to opt for alot of random/funny one liners as well as alot of wit in dialogue.

I dont even know if people find my comic funny, all i do is create a scenario and have my characters react to it in the least sensible way possible, or the most sensible, nut never inbetween. But i wouldnt want to go as far as highlighting comic decives, funny is funny because its funny not because it follows a system.

oh except for when i make fun of cliches thats making fun of stuff.

Generally I use two types of humour:
1: Toilet humour. This can consist primarily of fart jokes in my case, but it's by no means limited to them exclusively, i.e., can also include ribald sexual themes.
Everyone gets these jokes. I love them and they're easy to do.

2: Word play. There's many a time I find humour in a certain combination of words and phrases, hidden jokes on people's names, history etc...
Few people ever get these jokes, but it makes me happy to have them there.

This is why I’d never make a good humorist of comedian. I’m no good at everyday humour. I can either do very earthy, simple stuff; or clever, high level stuff; but not much else. I’m simply not smart enough.
I joke joke around easily enough normally, when it comes to comics though I only have two speeds. :(

Having eccentric characters. Having a character that does believable yet hilarious things is really a good way to make an audience chuckle. Certain American animated series have done this with great results. I don't think the over-the-top Japanese humor transfers well into english though.

As for me, I try to use eccentric characters.

I have a tendency to just have the characters say something normal, but say it in an unusual way. Like, instead of saying, "I'm going to kick your ass", they might say, "I'm about to give you a prescription for my boot; and it's a suppository".

I tend to agree with ccs1989 and I like character-based humor. If you have well-made characters, they start to write the story for you. It's like Seinfeld, where they created and balanced a cast with just the right personalities, then putting them in situations makes the jokes and story.

I think one of the types of humor I employ a lot is irony. I try to be careful, though. Most of the comic strips I hate employ this humor. Like Garfield. Garfield's last panel often has you thinking, "Hmmm... that is contrary to what I was expecting." And that's about the extent of the funniness, too. You certainly don't laugh at it.

TEO's humor mostly hinges on three things:

1. Irony (and its loudmouthed little brother, Sarcasm).
2. Existentialist satire.
3. Pop culture references.

The first one is easy to spot in TEO-- why, I'll bet that there's a flippant remark made by somebody on almost every page-- and the third one should be obvious as well, what with all the close tie-ins with the music industry. The second one, however, is a little harder to explain: it's kind of a subtle, extended reversal of what people expect will happen.

For instance, your average comic story involves a conflict between good versus evil, with the protagonists overcoming various obstacles and eventually learning something along the way. I attempted to turn that inside out: The conflict in TEO (between Allied Vectors and Dr. Bellanova) isn't neatly divided across any ethical lines. Walter, when faced with an obstacle, doesn't usually succeed. Action-packed climaxes rarely happen, if ever. There are no morals offered from the stories (or, if there are, they're usually bleak ones), and, by the time TEO's story is over (which won't be long now), I guarantee you that none of the characters will have actually changed their outlook on life much.

Why is this funny? Superficially, a reader might get a bit of a rise from the Flaming Croutons' mishaps-- a quick, seemingly harmless shot of schadenfreude, if you will. But I think that the real reason that people find it funny (or at least I find it funny) is because we can recognize ourselves in Walter's and Lloyd's and Dexy's roles. We've been steamrolled over by life as much as they have, and TEO's story doesn't try to pretend that everything's going to be all right... just like life itself. And just like life, all the reader can do in the face of that... is laugh. TEO is no escapist's tale; though it may be science fiction, I've tried to make it feel real.

Of course, sometimes I parody in a more obvious sense: Pages 55 through 57, after all, were mostly a thinly masked diatribe on how ridiculous I find the concept of giant fighting robots. But the whole "realist satire" thing I try to keep running throughout the whole thing. ...Really, the phrase "existentialist satire" itself is kind of redundant. Satire is the mirror through which we view our own world, and though it sometimes may be cracked in places, it's always funny-- if not always "ha ha" funny, then at least "peculiar" funny, I guess. You just need to learn how to laugh at it.

~IJ

PS: Wow. That post sounded way more philosophical than it probably needed to be.

Kennedy0

Tater Salad
Gay Rape

IT'S GENIUS!

I took it a step further, gay domestic violance/rape.

[imageshack.us]

For me, a typical penis comic is carefully contructed and well thoguht out piece of genius. Each panel is engineered to be funny to me, or someone else that knows what I'm talking about. Kind of like how that shitty Family my cartoon does, except its more like that time I ripped off John K. Also a major influane on my artistic style is the religious channels shitty cartoons. They, like anime, almost move but not quite. They always look like they were thrown together quickly, and very half assed. I'd like to hope at some point, I piss everyone off. Thats the main comedic goal. To do jokes in such poor taste, that Howard Stern will bow down before me and say "you truely are the king of kings" to have Andrew Dice Clay look at me and go "Oh, so you want I should suck ya dick for yas or somethin?" Or simply to just go where others don't go. To cross lines, push buttons, and just plain wierd out on shit. In comics of mine, you'll find homoerotisim, fart jokes, super heroes, fanboyism, angst melodrama, frace, parody, non sequitor, satire, rape, cutting, murders, abortions, terrorism, and probably other bodily fluids. Every page in penis is a real work of art that takes time and planning to get out exactly how I want it.

Basicly, I set it up with an introduction. "I'm captain faggot." and the guy has a globe on his chest, a big smile, and a rainbow flag. Thats panel one. Panel two is aclose up on his eyes, and it will say "I hates *uses n word*!" which, is offensive because of the word hate. I absolutely can't stand the word hate. In fact, I think hate should be blurred out to censor our eyes, so that it should be changed to ****, with four of those, you know what you mean, but its censored. Think of the children. I'm a grown man whose fucked up in life royally enough to where I make crude jokes on the internet, its okay for me to see the word ****, but when a fucking child that wnaders onto my site from some myspace where some faggot hotlinks my image? I hate that. Anyway, back to this typical penis adventure. Panel 3 would have four african tribes men saying "click clack click" possibly holding spears. Then panel four would be faggot man bending over with his hind qaurters pointing towards the tribesmen, saying "Faggot Powers Activate" panel 5 shows a rainbow coming out of his ass attacking the tribesmen. Possibly causing them to bleed copious amounts of red fluids. Basicly all I do is blob on some dark red, then blob on some light red. Easy peasy japenazy. So then, panel six will have the same image as panel one saying "Faggot man saves the day again!"

Thats a typical penis comic. Really, I'm all about good taste and family entertainment. Except, intsead of saying *uses n word* he would say niggers, because this is a forum I don't want to be banned for using a term to describe a white man of poor qaulity, isnce some find it offensive, I won't dare use it.

Well my style is a mix of “fish out of water” situations, fun to write characters, sarcasm, and pop culture references.

In real life, I'm told I'm very deadpan

Hmm... I think my (our?) particular style of humor-- seriously aided by my artist, Steph Freese-- is pretty situational. Bizarre juxtapositions seem key, though. Our current story is a film noir mystery... featuring Talking Mimes and feather smugglers. Our first early success is a mashup of all things Wonka and Apocalypse Now, with Candyland and Edward Gorey references thrown in for good measure.

Whether any of this is funny is up to the readers. I think what I'm shooting for is "entertainingly odd," but I like to think there are some laugh out loud moments.

In terms of personal philosophy, I don't think you can tell a good story AND constantly have folks rolling around on the floor. Even Terry Pratchett paces his humor, and mixes in moments of horror for good measure. That way, when something really funny happens, it stands out for the reader.

This doesn't hold true for gag-a-day strips obviously. What do y'all think?

I tend to go for character humour. I've got a cast of characters who can be paired up to make jokes just out of it being those two talking together.

Captain Ridley and Matey are my current favourite pairing, Matey being the straight man, the sane, intelligent one, and Ridders being the innocent, naive one who may be slightly challenged in the grey matter department. ^_^

Basically, I enjoy just putting my characters into situations and thinking about how they'd react. I also enjoy a touch of dark humour when it's called for, like the end of my Fisherman storyline. I think a shocked giggle is the best kind of laugh to get. ;)

To use an example of the kind of humour I enjoy, one of my favourite comics on DD is Life and Death. I enjoy the visual humour, and the character interactions are amusing. :)

I'm more into situational humour. I find 4th-wall-type humour to have become quite old and overused. I also enjoy the occasional parody.

I have to say I don't know what I use most often. I know I break the 4th wall CONSTANTLY, but it fits the style of my comic since most of the time when I do it it's actually -me-. I don't know, nobody's complained about it. I also use a lot of shitty puns. Awkward situations. Sometimes I resort to non-sequitors. Since I take most of my material from real life, or at least as inspiration, I don't have to "formulate" the funny, it just comes from the situation.

... ... ew, I hate my humor style.

Just to clarify, I have nothing against people who would want to use 4th-wall type humour. I'm just saying that I'm not amused by it as much as I used to. I still like it though if it is executed well. :)

An example of a 4th wall broken well is 'Robin Hood: Men in Tights' in my opinion.

Plsh, See the ending to The History of the World part one, "this is movies, we can do whatever we want!" Best ending ever. Shindlers list didn't leave an impact on me at all, but god damn History of the World part 1's genre defining 4th wall breaking touched me. I'll show you where if you hold up a dolly.

Ah yes! I absolutely love History of the World Part 1. Hilarious stuff. :D

I'm not usually the type to make dark humor...but that's what VP mostly has so far.

Well, I usually use characters, I guess... I don't know, I develop characters and make them into jokes. In my comic, I have a few characters who are mainly used for jokes. Umbra, Jim, and Gabe are my three favorite characters to exploit. But... yeah. I really just go with whatever seems funny. Although, story arcs will occasionally take away chances for jokes.

I love playing with cliches! I can tell already that cliche-twisting will become a major part of my comic later on. ^^
Character based humor is a close second, though. Eccentric chars are simply lots of fun to watch.

I do all kinds of gags.

Most of the time, my formula for humor is simply emulating the way my friends and I talk to each other. My best friend and I have this gentle cruelty we play on each other. She's constantly taking jabs at my masculinity, and I tease her because she's little. I think it's hysterical when characters gently pick on each other.

I also like to do the following:

-Parodies
-Exaggerated stereotypes
-Running gags
-Slapstick
-Word play
-Awkward lesbian moments
-Potty language/humor

I'm always surprised by what some people find very funny in FanDanGo. Some things which I think are hillarious are missed by many readers, while other things that I felt were just amusing little details get lots of comments on how funny they are.

For me, the funniest things I write use what I would consider a very British comedy technique, which is comic understatement. It's where the comic really links in to stuff like Wallace and Gromit films and Terry Pratchett's books. If you don't get what I mean, then imagine a person narrowly escaping a huge explosion and saying in a very normal voice 'oh dear, that was a bit close, wasn't it?'. I also use the opposite of this, which links into it, which is when a character totally overreacts to something pretty insignificant. When you put the two together, things become very comical, because you can have a minor problem cause a huge reaction, then stumble into a comic anti-climax, bringing the whole thing down to earth again.
Juliet in particular is a fun character to write because she doesn't show strong emotional reaction to much at all. She says things which may well be loaded with innuendo, or quite worrying, but in a totally neutral way, and under-reacts or reacts in ways the don't seem normal to situations.
Because the comic isn't set in our reality, I can't make specific pop-culture references. Sometimes that's kind of annoying, but I do come close sometimes, making little alusions to things. Another thing I like to do is not-quite-break the fourth wall. I really like the idea of people in a comic talking about comics and comic book convention.

....Hmm, I can see why not everybody gets my humour... 0_o'

Though there are occasions in Wolf which I find funny, I think the characters have a morbid, dark humour which not many people get. There isn't much slapstick in any of my comics and I am totally awful when it comes to toilet humour, so that's out of the question, too.

Thur and Viera is all angst, so humour is very rare there. Nonexistent, really, at least until a certain character makes his debut there ;)

In Session though, is the one with jokes, and that's also in a way black humour because the situation isn't funny if you are the one going through it. But it can be quite funny in its irony, and that's what sets people laughing. :) So my slant on humour is black, slice-of-life, cynical humour. People get that 99% of the times ;)

The humor in my comic is not super pronounced. It echos the type of humor in my real daily life. I have a lot of accidental/misfortune type humor happen to specific unlucky characters (like a Gene Wilder movie, I guess), and then a couple of my characters have a usual sarcasm to them, always picking on each other, making fun of their "duh" moments.

I don't think I use a particular kind of humor in my strip. I tend to think all humor has a philosophical edge though. Something is funny when it is both true and absurd. The truth part is where the philosophy comes in. What is the "truth?", etc. That also might explain the subjectivity of humor. But, what do I know? I work in a library, not a comedy club. There's probably a reason for that. lol! Still, like many others here (I'm guessing) I dream of doing this for a living. OK, does that call for a cry or a laugh emoticon? lol! :cry:. There, that should cover it.

Characters and situations.

Some times it's just the character expressions I make to be funny like have the narrator talking seriously ,yet in the picture the character is making a goofy face or in a weird scenario. EX: http://www.drunkduck.com/Demon_Eater/index.php?p=166633

Try not to use pop culture references, because I want the comic to still be considered funny for years to come.