Unfunny Things
A collection of pretentious things from the web and elsewhere that are much less funny than they think they are.
Feb 19th, 2010 @ 5:54 pm
Boxer Hockey’s Sonic Comics
Boxer Hockey is a boring comic about video game dudes. But that’s neither here nor there. A recent break from the story lead to a clusterfuck of terrifically unfunny Wacky Sonic Comics that take the worst of 4chan newfaggery and random humour. The end result is absolute shit that’s being eaten up by the Sonic community. And presumably Tyson Hesse’s existing fans, but who cares about them.
There are four of these comics.
I will deconstruct the last one for you. You can do this to any comic, and good comics can stand up to it. Find a funny comic. Try it. The jokes are identifiable and good! The jokes in this are not.
Panel One: Sonic is acting out of character here. You will notice this is a theme repeated often. Notice that he calls Eggman a “dick” while he lights a cigarette. I believe this kind of joke stopped getting a reaction from sensible people after they read their third MAD magazine in the early 1970s. Knuckles is making a funny pose like a gorilla and saying “ooh” - I think this is a non sequitur joke, or it’s just furthering the idea established in comic #120 that Knuckles is a crazy character.
Panel Two: Again, a funny face and exaggerated pose. Knuckles is clearly zany. There is some permutation of pies and cheese humour here in his question about “this eggs man”. I suppose it’s acceptable that he might not know how to say “Eggman” having only heard the name once, but the emphasis of this panel is on the fact he said it wrong, and that makes it very unfunny instead of something that could accent a larger, more sensical joke. Instead, I suppose we are meant to laugh at the fact “eggs man” is nonsensical and just another instance of that crazy cat Knuckles doing his thing.
Panel Three: This is a mundane panel, with some more pointlessly wacky poses. I should point out here that it isn’t funny to do these over and over and over and over and over. Relentlessly assaulting the viewer with weird poses is not only inelegant, it’s unfunny—you need to pace this out for it to work. Watch an episode of Ren & Stimpy for examples of how to do it right.
Panel Four: Ha, so the eggs man is flopping about as he speaks too. I’m reminded of when I used to seriously tease people by repeating what they said in a retarded voice with retarded body movements to accent the effect. Actually, I never did that, but I kinda remember my contemporaries doing it when I was a preteen..
Panels Five, Six and Seven: Hey look, Tails looks retarded. Knuckles is being retarded. He is yelling “EMMEROWWWDS~”. Sonic is uncertain that he wants to call them his friends. Chortle.
Panel Eight: This is one of the only two reasonably funny panels in the comic, but it’s a very mild joke. I don’t think it’s all that wrong to satirise the fact that robots just appear in the games, as if there’s no effort involved in Eggman creating them, and I suppose this happens here as he exclaims “Boop! Robot.” I think that you can cancel out good jokes with bad ones really quickly, though, as seen in…
… Panel Nine. Tails Doll stopped being funny after the 20th joke made on The GHZ board in mid-1998 or whatever. It was a very dead horse by the time the rest of the Sonic community caught on to the joke and repeated it occasionally in the half-decade following. I can only assume this is Tails Doll (the website I am linking to is very intentional, btw), and that Hesse picked up on the joke that it was “EVIL! XD” that still circulates amongst the less socially able types that hang about online and still remember Sonic R.
Panels Ten and Eleven: I thought it was “eggs man”? Oh, I guess that was just random humour then. Anyway, the joke here is that Knuckles has blindly repeated Sonic’s assertion that Eggman took his emeralds, and that he’s stupid enough to think asking Eggman will have some kind of useful outcome for him. He also said “emmeroowds”. This really is not funny.
Panel Twelve: Oh, he directly answers “Yes”, with a funny face. What a turnabout from before when he was acting vaguely like Eggman.
Panel Thirteen: Bat-face. Face can be a funny suffix or component of a nick name, I guess.. it’s still kind of staid and hasn’t lifted us out of predictable mediocrity yet..
Panel Fourteen: Oh. I think this is the best panel, but again it’s a tame joke that’s cancelled out by the shitty jokes surrounding it.
Panel Fifteen: Knuckles is in love with the bat despite her looking like a real, hideous bat. How funny. I suppose this is what happens when you write a comic which has a punchline in every single panel, the final one can barely compete. Although in this case, it does, because it’s yet another ho-hum joke in an endless stream of random humour and funny faces.
So that’s it. This comic is designed for idiots, and should not appeal to anybody who appreciates comedy as something that relies on insightful observations, careful pacing and appeals to empathy and emotion.
Can you do that with Sonic? Sure. You can satirise elements of the games that are odd, dated, don’t make sense or reflect other interesting realities. You can make jokes that play off the characters and gameplay mechanics. Make jokes that relate to what players of the game experienced, or truths about the development of the game. they might not be great in execution, but if the ideas are there you can at least respect the purpose of the joke and imagine how it can be done better.
But a mishmash of 4chan expressions, John K ripoffs, and random humour is irredeemably vacuous, especially when thrown at you panel after panel after panel with no serious attempt at a meaningful structure behind it all. It is the comedic equivalent to masturbating 20 times in an hour, publicising it, and watching everyone around you proclaim you a sex god. It’s awful, inarticulate, sloppy, shitty and lazy and it’s utterly detestable that people like this. I hate this unfunny comic.
Via Fireball20XL
