On “funny comics” and lowered expectations:

	One of the worst criticisms a reader can level against a comic strip 
is the piercing dismissal, “it’s just not funny.” Well, there’s a lot more to 
that comment than is apparent.

	Not being funny is a death-touch to a comic that’s actually trying 
to be a “gag” strip. If the sole purpose of a comic strip is to present simple 
humor, failure at that level obliterates the entire reason for the strip to 
exist.
	But comic strips have the ability to present something more than 
gag punchlines or recycled slapstick. In the Golden Age of comics, daily 
newspaper strips inspired conversations about fantasy, politics, adventure, 
heroism, childhood, and religion. With the reduction of comics from the 
media of thought into simple commodities measured in picas, comics have 
lost opportunities to excel. Add to that, the tendency to allow “big name” 
comics creators to recycle art and writing material because their products 
sell millions, and the worth of a comic is defined by the wrong measures.

	Some creators have attempted to present greater ranges of depth and 
insight into their strips. Zits (King Features) is as humorous as anything out 
there, but also steps aside from the humor template to display angst, fantasy, 
anger, rudeness, and nihilism. I’ve been amazed at some of the content Zits 
has tried—and succeeded-at getting away with. Bloom County made 
uncomfortable humor out of real-life racism, it skewered social “hot 
buttons”, and fearlessly dissected the topics of sex, drugs, violence, rock and 
roll, and religion.

	The intent of River and the Weird Kid isn’t to present a sequence 
of gags and jokes. While some of it is humorous, the purpose is wholly 
different. RATWK is a folk story about friends who reveal some of the 
best lessons about real life by, ironically, stumbling through their 
misunderstandings about life. River’s questions to Roger about why 
humans do certain things almost never earn him the right answer, but by 
making Roger consider the questions, Roger himself discovers truths such 
as “Adults don’t like it when we do childish things to be more like them” 
(while contemplating his first cigarette).

	I have to admit, it is gratifying to watch people read RATWK who 
explode in laughter or exclaim, “Oh that is SO true! I can relate!” The 
oddness of that experience is that Roger, who is certainly strange and 
bizarre in many ways, is also universal to us because his inability to 
reconcile his exuberant imagination with the mundane “real world” is a 
tension everyone faces.
	Sometimes comic strips should make an effort to move beyond 
“it’s funny” to do something even better: to show us what’s real by 
showing us what’s not.