The Comedy of Images
I write a webcomic almost weekdaily at Wizzlefish. Once or twice a week I’ll publish a comic made of images (like the one above), in the style of Superpoop or A Softer World.
These are my favorite comics to write, because they’re both easy, and most hilarious. I’m told by my friends that the comedic value of this particular genre of webcomic is much higher than the others. But why is this?
This type of comic is straightforward, colorful, and easy to digest. Your average person spends, what, 2-4 seconds on a website, and if there isn’t something there to grab their attention, it’s not worth looking for it. My black and white comics with large blocks of text, a la Dinosaur Comics are funny, but they take work. The average cybergoer isn’t looking for work unless they are some sort of scholar, but in the business of webcomics, you’re audience isn’t really a bunch of intellectuals. Or maybe it is. Regardless, comic books, graphic novels, and webcomics were designed originally for quick consumption. Modern comics come in $3 magazines, eventually published as trade paperbacks that take you a few hours to read at most.
But further than that, these comics are made from photographs, mostly. Actual digital representations of people and scenery who are alive and human, not illustrations. They aren’t creations of man, they are man itself, and that is an entirely new dimension of humanity to relate to. It’s much easier to relate to an actual living person captured by a photograph than an artist’s interpretation.
So where am I going? Comedic imagery is one of the most important facets of comedy. You can’t just tell a good story and expect people to laugh. Or, you can, but the joke won’t last, the people won’t remember the story. You need images, descriptions, characterization to fully sell a joke. And what better imagery and description to use than actual images?
A good example would be memes, most of which come about in the form of captioned images. These bits of comedy arise from the stagnant cesspool called 4chan, and some of them are actually funny and make you laugh. They wouldn’t work without the images themselves, that’s what the joke is built upon. You can’t just say, “oh so there’s a cat and it’s jumping in midair and it looks like it’s riding a bicycle, like an invisible one, yeah?” That wouldn’t work. You need the picture. You need substance. You need 1000 more words.
Which do you like more, the image comics of Wizzlefish, or the regular ones?