Websnark

Comment from: Christopher B. Wright posted at December 12, 2005 2:43 PM

It made me laugh out loud...

Comment from: Kristofer Straub posted at December 12, 2005 3:02 PM

I don't think there is enough humor like this out there; it's my favorite kind.

Comment from: Brandon J. Carr posted at December 12, 2005 3:08 PM

I hope you guys also saw Friday's...it's one of their best so far.

b

Comment from: Ojin posted at December 12, 2005 3:08 PM

(tilts head) Yeah... now I come to think of it, it kinda feels like the kinda joke you might make, Kris. Which is no bad thing. ^_^

I don't read Rob and Elliot almost as much as I should...

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at December 12, 2005 3:27 PM

The essence of humor is timing, and the essence of annotation is the abject murder of timing and the burying of it at the crossroads.

My lover, timing's stalker.

You should see the apartment. I thought about asking him to take down some of the mementos, but the decay of timing only really ever results in metaphorical putrescence. I can cope with that. Sort of.

We might have to get a spray.

Comment from: Doublemint posted at December 12, 2005 3:44 PM

It's the last panel that kills me.

Comment from: Ford Dent posted at December 12, 2005 3:57 PM

Agreement on this weekend's "Boondocks."

Also agreement on Rob and Elliot. Because I don't think they get enough praise.

They're geniuses.

Comment from: Tice with a J posted at December 12, 2005 4:04 PM

Here is my personal favorite of R&E strips. It hasn't got the lovely characterization found in the other strips, but it nails the lovely crisp art and the utter randomness of the humor.

Comment from: TheNintenGenius posted at December 12, 2005 4:17 PM

Rob and Elliot is by far one of the funniest comics I've ever read. I don't think I've ever laughed as much or as hard reading through any other comic's archives.

For what it's worth, this one is probably my all-time favorite Rob and Elliot comic, though they're all brilliant in their own way.

Comment from: Abby L. posted at December 12, 2005 4:18 PM

Ahh.. Laughter. I get so little of it in my life. :) Thanks, dudes who make Rob and Elliot. Thanks Eric.

Comment from: theliel posted at December 12, 2005 4:27 PM

wow. that was...really good. I hope to see boondocks tonight.

Comment from: Archon Divinus posted at December 12, 2005 4:28 PM

I would be hard pressed to choose a favorite R&E, but this one and this one spring readily to mind.

Also, "inject" is the best sound effect ever.

Comment from: Tangent posted at December 12, 2005 4:36 PM

*shiftyeyes*

Soooo... dumb is as dumb does?

*flrrd*

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at December 12, 2005 4:55 PM

Oh, please don't tell me that. I couldn't watch the Boondocks because I was stuck doing work. Particularly disgusting work, no less.

Eh... this comic kinda works. I snickered. I'll give it that.

Also, am I the only one who reads Wednesday's post and thinks of melting clocks?

Comment from: PatMan posted at December 12, 2005 5:14 PM

Would have been nice if they aired the "best" Boondocks before I got utterly bored with the show. Amazing how it only took them four epiosodes.

(Or maybe I just got tired of the constant shouting of "n****" as filler for most of the episodes. At least it's not as bad as the comics have been for the last year. Oh yes... They had me, but they lost me.)

Comment from: Montykins posted at December 12, 2005 5:57 PM

I've enoyed the Rob & Elliott strips linked in this discussion, but they're loading really slowly for me. I assume that's because they were linked from Websnark. It's a vicious circle.

Comment from: theliel posted at December 12, 2005 5:58 PM

funny, i've found the show quite amusing and the deadpan rendition of samul l. jackson especially halarious. and the chair. I mean, boondocks is no venture bros, or Aqua Teen Hunger Froce, but it's still pretty funny.

*shrug* maybe it's 'cause i'm from Detroit and all, but I find it fairly representative of most conversations I can remember.
or maybe it's 'cause I never read the comic. I suppose having a Bloom County/Outland animated series that sorta went all pear shaped might have made me upset.

Comment from: Robert Hutchinson posted at December 12, 2005 7:03 PM

Dammit. All that made me want to do was to explain the funny, and thereby ruin it. There's the thing where you can't figure out what the thing was, the thing that makes no sense, and the thing that's a straight-faced mocking of the thing.

Yep.

I really do think that there are a ton of webcomickers who write at least something "like this", and I love them for it. Straub, Clevinger, occasionally Allison . . .

Comment from: Darth Paradox posted at December 12, 2005 7:27 PM

The Funny that can be explained is not the eternal Funny.

Comment from: fourdoor posted at December 12, 2005 7:51 PM

Kind of reminds me of this gem from Random Frog Children.

Comment from: Gavin R. posted at December 12, 2005 9:00 PM

Hm. This utter savaging of timing and its associated enjoyment of the work at hand may be why I eventually fled from English. I [i]like[/i] enjoying my massive amounts of reading, thankyouverymuch!

Comment from: matthewabel posted at December 12, 2005 9:06 PM

I don't know. That last panel is laugh out loud funny to me.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at December 12, 2005 9:25 PM

Ah, but the true funny can only be funny to some, as they look upon it in the funny light. Those that look upon the funny in a light that is not funny miss the funny.

Okay, between my last two posts, I apparently took my surrealism pills today. And here I thought it was oatmeal.

Comment from: Arra posted at December 12, 2005 9:26 PM

Every time I have to write an essay about some writer, I get more frustrated for this very reason. If somebody made some point really eloquently, or crafted some bit of writing really perfectly . . . well, there's absolutely no way some puny little college freshman is going to do it any better while writing an essay ABOUT it.

Of course, I suppose fangirling/fanboying is a perfectly legitimate form of self-expression.

Comment from: Alexis Christoforides posted at December 12, 2005 10:46 PM

I really hope Hampton's stand-up career takes off, those guys are hilarious. It's kind of sad that there's more Sluggy-ness in their "Suicide Frisbee" Saturdays than there is on regular Sluggy these days.

(Not to mention 'funny'. Latest Sluggy was so forced, it can probably considered joke rape)

(Also I just noticed that Clay linked to an upcoming Sam & Max webcomic. A Sam & Max webcomic!)

Comment from: siwangmu posted at December 12, 2005 11:04 PM

I, um... I didn't like it. Don't get me wrong, I can *appreciate* it. I love the art style, the expressions, I can tell I'll probably enjoy their comic style and I definitely want to go through the archives, but, well, this comic hit A Button of mine and that tends to get in the way of the funny. (The Button in question is I am so tired of making fun of "political correctness." So tired. Now, honestly? I don't think that's foundational to the joke here, and I'm almost certain it's not responsible for the joke being well executed (for instance, timing and expressions and such other good things). But it grates in a way similar to looking through the conservative magazine on campus where they made a joke about how college republicans somewhere started a fake bestiality advocacy group in response to gay rights organizations. I don't care if you tell an incredibly brilliant joke about fucking a dog, I'm not gonna enjoy it in that context because you are hitting one of my Buttons.)

So basically if this was pure whimsy I'd probably love it to death but unfortunately it calls to mind many, many instances of jokes based on "dur wouldn't it be silly to start protecting group X as long as we're "inventing" all these other oppressed minorites" and it goes sour for me.

So out of guilt I'm probably going to come back and post once I've devoured the archives and fallen in live, because I hate making negative comments, but feel compelled to share my reactions at times like this anyway.

Comment from: benlehman posted at December 12, 2005 11:26 PM

Very funny.

yrs--
--Ben

Comment from: TasteMyHouse posted at December 12, 2005 11:40 PM

some of the jokes in the archive i seem to remember from the Simpsons..

-- Siwangmu, i don't think that was the intention of the joke at all.

Comment from: Tice with a J posted at December 13, 2005 12:36 AM

Also, am I the only one who reads Wednesday's post and thinks of melting clocks?

Upon rereading the post, I can no longer get The Persistence of Memory out of my mind's eye. Good ol' Dali. He didn't paint the Surrealist style - he lived it.

Comment from: neongrey posted at December 13, 2005 12:48 AM

I dunno, I read it once, and said to myself, 'well, that's not very funny'.

I read it again, and got 'well, I guess I get it, but it's still not very funny'.

Then I read it a third time, and I managed a 'heh'.

So, I dunno. Maybe I just need to read it six more times, at which point it'll be the funniest thing in the world.

Comment from: siwangmu posted at December 13, 2005 1:11 AM

"Siwangmu, i don't think that was the intention of the joke at all."

I am so very willing to believe you--any volunteers to ruin the entire premise of Eric's snark by helping me recontextualize/explain the strip?

Comment from: Prodigal posted at December 13, 2005 2:21 AM

Having Sam Jackson provide the voice of a white boy who's trying to be Blacker Than Thou was sheer comedy gold. Especially when they did the "Is 'What' a country" bit.

Comment from: Brandon E. posted at December 13, 2005 2:37 AM

People actually like the animated Boondocks? I can't say I've found anything worth laughing at in the two episodes I watched and the animation style is painful to watch. Is it too much to ask that a cartoon try fully animating actions rather then skipping frames? I'm so sick of the anime look and the lazy ass anime pseudo-animation that has become oh so popular over the last decade and a half.

I find it incredibly sad that there are so few animators heralded for their animation skills in cartoons anymore, its now all focus on the writing. Sure the writing is incredibly important, but how its presented can make a mediocre story captivating or a brilliant story yawn inducing.

sorry for the ranty tangent...

Comment from: Comus posted at December 13, 2005 3:47 AM

I thought that it was a rather ordinary repetition of a very old joke. enough for a slight twitch of the lips, perhaps, in acknowledgement of an old aquaintance, but nothing more.

Comment from: RoboYuji posted at December 13, 2005 4:13 AM

Ha ha, the animation quality of the Boondocks show is still 10-100 times better than pretty much any of the in-house comedy block cartoons, some of which practically do not have animation. Hell, most anime TV series with low budgets do.

Comment from: Buzzfloyd posted at December 13, 2005 5:52 AM

Um... I really like the funny (and this strip is going onto the 'must read' list), but I also really like the analysis, and I'm kind of disappointed at not getting any - it only enhances my appreciation.

Now that we've all had a chance to look at the strip unspoiled, could we get some analysis? I want to hear what Eric (or anyone else) thought about why it works.

Comment from: MagnoliaPearl posted at December 13, 2005 7:12 AM

I missed the Boondocks. *insert frowning emoticon here*

Comment from: TasteMyHouse posted at December 13, 2005 2:16 PM

When I read it, I didn't see it as a criticism or ridicule of politically correctness.
What i saw was just him taking a familiar situation
(someone taking offense to a joke that hits too close to home) and then applying it to an almost universal situation (nearly every joke involves a "dumb guy")....

Actually the more I look at it, the harder it is for me to not see it the way you see it...
But regardless!

I don't think that they meant to imply that taking offense to jokes like that is bad, i think they just meant to humorously recontexualize a familiar situation..

But dang it, siwangmu, maybe i have to get my buttons pushed too.

Comment from: Aerin posted at December 13, 2005 2:52 PM

It's definitely the last panel that sells it. Otherwise it's a pretty basic joke, but the fact that he's so damn sorry for accidentally offending him is just brilliant.

Comment from: NthDegree256 posted at December 13, 2005 3:21 PM

Continuing the trend of dragging Eric's premise out behind the shed and putting a few bullet holes in it...

... what really sold the comic for me was the indignant, straight-faced way in which Rob said, "My mother is dumb. I'm half-dumb."

Comment from: NthDegree256 posted at December 13, 2005 3:24 PM

And regarding the Boondocks, I've seen every episode so far, and none of them have made me laugh quite as much as the first episode. "We've all been watching the same news! The police have been doing this fire-hose thing for a week now. I just figured we'd all wear raincoats."

The latest episode came closest, though, with a few good lines like "Ha ha! You said 'Michael Jackson.' That's funny."

Comment from: policyvote posted at December 13, 2005 4:30 PM

Nth, you nailed it for me and my sense of humor. "My MOTHER is dumb. I'm HALF-DUMB."

I think one thing that keeps this from being a "make fun of political correctness" joke is the fact that the joke Elliot is telling is so completely nondescript and lame, and has nothing to do with anything. Rob takes offense because the fall guy in the joke is dumb--and his mother is dumb, which makes him half-dumb. Both the offense-taking and the shaky grasp of inherited traits are dumb things to do. Compounding everything is that Elliot feels like a heel after he realizes his alleged faux pas.

And now, the frog has officially died of it.

Peace
policy

Comment from: Sili posted at December 13, 2005 5:14 PM

Meh. I just don't get it. But then again, I'm the same way about Achewood. They can't all be funny to everyone.

Comment from: Robert Hutchinson posted at December 13, 2005 8:11 PM

Others have hit two of the three points I saw. I will add my third: the joke at the beginning of the comic, of which we only get a punchline and a vague explanation. I was still trying to figure out what the damn thing was when I got to "half-dumb", and I find that (the confusing piece of a joke) amusing.

That said, I was only moderately amused. It didn't bowl me over or anything.

Comment from: Robin Z posted at December 13, 2005 11:20 PM

Robert Hutchinson: I know what joke it was. I told that joke (or rather, a version of it) to my dad awhile back, in fact, and he put it on his website (or rather, he put a version of it...).

That said, I agree with you. It's amusing, but it's not spectacular. Then again, I only actually laugh out loud at a very few things.

Comment from: Sam Logan posted at December 14, 2005 5:13 AM

Rob and Elliot is a funny comic! However, I'm sure that I remember a joke on Clone High play out in the exact same way as this strip... especially the last two panels.

Of course, Clone High was always poking fun at "issue" episodes of sitcoms, so maybe it's just a coincidence!

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