Wed, 2006 Aug 30
Why is Ballard Street so funny?
I generally find single panel comics a waste of time.
They’re simply too short to develop an interesting joke or story. To
me, it’s primarily the lack of development that destroys the humor.
Take, for example, a recent
Brevity comic, in which an elderly lady calls a couple of
guys at a baseball game “Litterbugs”. The amount of information
contained in the picture is significant: it’s clear we’re at a
ballpark; the guys are eating peanuts in an environment where throwing
the shells on the ground–as they’re doing–is appropriate; the lady
likely understands the etiquette, as the man with her has one of those
foam hands. A well-set scene, and your basic irony, but it’s just not
funny (this is my general feeling from Brevity and similar comics), and
I think it’s mainly because I know nothing about these people.
(It actually became funnier as I wrote this when I noticed
that the elderly couple are Boston fans, whilst the others wear Yankees
gear–but that most people will pick that up is betting a lot).
Then there’s Ballard
Street, which is consistently very funny. In fact, I find
myself laughing out loud at it far more often than any other comic.
Same basic principle, a single panel visual and possibly a one-liner.
The difference to me is that I know the people in Ballard Street.
Although the characters change with each day, I know them all, because
I see parts of me in them. It’s a look at people with some social
expectation removed, either doing something not socially condoned or
responding outside of cultural norms. It’s the things we do when
nobody’s looking that aren’t wrong or foolish, but that we don’t do in
front of others because it’s not a part of our social selves. And
because of that, I almost always identify with the characters.
And so, the one-liner works.
