It’s been said that if you have to explain a joke then it wasn’t really a good joke. And, as I found out, this applies to comics as well.
I began sketches for the “Big” comic a few weeks ago and racked my brain for ways to satirize the growing size of cruise ships and how it seems like each new ship exists simply to contend for the elusive title of “World’s Largest Cruise Ship.”
Oddly enough I didn’t incorporate that thought into my sketches whatsoever (funny how some ideas get derailed by a one-track-mind!). I, instead (an hopefully with moderate humorous success), tried to focus on the sheer size of the ship itself or the “complimentary” things usually provided once you get onboard for “convenience.”
So I sketched up a couple decent comics that I thought achieved the level of satire and humor and did so fairly obviously. But it turns out that humor, like beauty, is in the mind of the artist and subjective, at best. This is why it’s a good thing that the content of The Current is reviewed by 7 other people before it is the glimmering, perfectly executed email in your inbox.
The reactions I got when I showed the comics to those 7 other people were not quite what I had imagined. Granted I wasn’t looking for side-busting laughter, but I was hoping for at least a few good chuckles and minimal need to explain the sketches. Oh well.
From the 7 sketches I provided, only one didn’t need explanation. The rest, sadly, required a little more attention on my part to communicate their exact point, satire and humor. The one sketch that made it was the one you saw in The Current and hopefully you got a chuckle and didn’t need any additional explanation.
For those of you who didn’t and do, it’s a drawing (below) of a cruise ship that rests on top of the world because it is so big and reads “Captain, I think we need a bigger port!” indicating that the World is no longer big enough to fit these growing cruise ships.
So, with this experience behind me, I’ve come to realize that humor, in comic form with a supposedly obvious point, isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Ha ha.
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