So…here’s a fun question: how creative and brilliant can you get with just a comic strip?
Yesterday I was scrolling through Facebook and this marvelous gem created by Nathan W. Pyle just showed up.
Funny, right?
Then let’s go into the why’s and how’s!(Yes, we are about to do a thorough, scientific breakdown of the humour and delivery of an internet comic strip. You just gotta love Steemit.)
Ok, so the first layer of impact is the image itself. The art is cute, childlike, simple, yet very expressive. The anthropomorphization of the Starfish, The Sun and The Moon (giving them faces, emotions), the exaggerated simple emotions that each character goes through, even the fact that their respective texts are written in a scribbled font with no delimitating speech bubbles; all of these choices gel together perfectly and create a story/joke universe that’s light hearted, yet powerful with big emotions, and, most importantly, relatable and approachable. This is a really good recipe for making the type of comic strips that just lighten up your day, but in a simple and fun way.
Another one made by Nathan. This just made me giggle when I saw it.
So that’s the obvious one, which is really, really well done and it is hugely important, because it gives the Form and Frame that allow everything else to be presented and have a stronger impact.
Now...on to the good stuff :D.
First, let’s go through the joke structure. In the title I dubbed this style of comedy “Domino”, because this strip is actually made up of 6 Comedic beats that effortlessly flow from one to the next.
What is a comedic beat? A comedic, or story beat is a moment in which the focus of the story shifts and both It and the audience enter a new/different level of perceiving the story. It’s easier to see this in a comic strip, because, for the most part, each individual panel represents a new story beat.
This is how the beats/scenes of this strip are structured.
And this is the message/focus that each beat has*:
- A cute starfish is in trouble and is being dramatic about it;
- The drama involves someone else (so there is a relationship between the starfish and something/someone else) who is a role model that betrayed the starfish (“I was named after you”);
- The reveal that that someone else was the Sun which contains:
A) Logical humour cause the heat from the Sun is killing the Starfish,
B) The word play set up in the previous panel,
C) The twist that a Starfish can talk to the Sun,
D) The Sun is also being overly dramatic about the situation; - The Suns’ over dramatization catches the attention of the Moon who jumps in to save the situation, but it comes with an out of nowhere, yet fitting portrayal of the old school stereotypical American hero/rescuer/defender;
- The Moon saves the Starfish by using it’s power over the Tides (logical, smart humour);
- The final catharsis bomb which puts a clear, definitive end to the story, and also brings your focus (the audience) back to seeing this whole event as just a small, fun story by making fun of the overdramatization portrayed by the other 3 characters (Such Drama!).
*Keep in mind that this is all open to interpretation. The messages which I see in a piece of art are not the ones that you might see, because art is funny and twisted like that :)). Just look at the options which I wrote and see if you notice these thoughts/sensations/realizations coming to you while you engage with and follow the strip. If these ones don’t, THAT’S AWESOME! It means you see something different! You connect to a different string, different logic, different story!
Back to breaking down:
Each individual beat/joke is really well executed and they all work individually (more or less), but, like in any good piece of art, every element becomes so much more beautiful and impactful when it’s part of a story. The longer the story goes while still maintaining a logical string of cause and effect, the better each individual moment will feel and the better pay-off experience at the end.
This is literally the most accurate representation of this concept in action :). Try to see it there.
You can apply this principle in two ways:
- You do a good set-up, but which takes a while to put all the necessary pieces on the table, and then you deliver a pay-off for all of that set-up. This is basic and simple, but be aware that the longer you take to set-up, the bigger, better, smarter, wittier, more special your pay-off has to be. (Cause set-up and pay-off need to balance each other out to get a good cathartic experience and reaction from the audience).
- You have your A to B story that you want to tell, and while you’re setting up the pay-off for when you reach the end, you add mini stories (which have their own set-up and pay-off) inside your larger story. This is what this strip does. Let me show you.
If you take the first 3 panels on their own, they tell a story with a beginning, middle and end.
See?
You could actually just stop right there and feel that you did go on a journey and reached a good enough ending that provided you with a decent amount of satisfaction and chuckle. That’s when the strip goes to the next stage of the story with beats 4 & 5 that solve the issue of the previous stage.
So, just for funsies, you could see beats 1-3 as set-up for beats 4 & 5, all the while, again, every beat is funny in its own way, that still fits the overarching joke: the fact that it’s silly yet funny to think that non-human elements from nature actually have these kinds of emotions, experiences and discussions with each other.
Oh, and I actually just realized now while writing, that the final pay-off is set up from the first panel, due to the art style. Remember (or you could just…scroll up and read) what I said: we enter a cute, childlike, exaggerated world, and the final pay-off is an acknowledgement of: “Yes. This was indeed really silly!”
#masterful
There is one more technique that I want to mention from this strip regarding it’s layout.
The first row tells a complete story within the 3 panels, so that when you finish the row, you feel like you’ve finished a story. You’ve reached a pitstop and you can get ready for the next part of the story, while you’re moving your eyes from right to left. That is playing with the rhythm of the story and the rhythm of thought inside your audience. It’s really, really deep stuff (so it’s hard!) but the creator did it with such great subtlety and ease that you don’t actually realize that it happened until you take a step back and look at the journey of all of it.
And he uses this trick on more time in this strip, but, just for the fun of it, I’m not gonna tell you what that is 😊. I’m gonna let you guys figure it out.
If you want to look for it completely on your own, go for it, but if you'd like a helping hand, I will leave a hint at the end of the article for where the trick is used, but not why or to what effect (just don’t look at the hint if you don’t want it).
And, that's all I have to say about this genuine piece of brilliant art :). Thank you for joining me on this pretty lunatic trip of breaking down a comic strip right down to it’s bare bones and mechanics, just to see and to appreciate the mastery and brilliance that could and was used there.
This strip was made by artist Nathan W. Pyle. He makes a lot of high quality, really funny strips like this one, so if you want to see more of his work, follow him on Twitter, or on Instagram where he posts everything that he makes. Links down below.
Hope you enjoyed the article, and if you did, feel free to express that with an upvote or a comment 😊. Have an amazing rest of your day and remember to always have fun with the things in your life.
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The Hint Beat #4 is spread across 2 panels and Beat #5 is spread across 3 panels. Good luck! 😊