Comic 604: Mistakes

I'll bet you like this comic. Or at least, a lot more of you like this comic than usual. But I didn't. SURPRISE.

Here's why - it's another situation that might be funny in real life (hell, it would be funny in real life) but given that it's a manufactured situation, it's not so great. You could come up with tons of these awkward phrases pretty easily. I went into more detail on this a few weeks ago, so I won't repeat it here. Awkward mis-typings are a key pillar of the Bash.org pantheon, but they are funny because someone actually made those mistakes. Comic 575 had a similar problem.

For example, suppose I am a webcomic artist who is kind of obsessed with a friend of mine named Megan, and I decide I am going to do something about it. I intend to type to my friend, "I really should go have a talk with Megan" but just at that moment, someone walks in the room and wonders why it smells gross and I say I need to take a shower. So what I type is, "I really should go have a shower with megan" HA HA whoops! how embarrassing! how embarrassingly sexual.

OR MAYBE I am sitting at my computer and a friend asks me if I have gotten a chance to play New Video Game X. And I want to say, "well I haven't had time yet" but JUST AT THAT MOMENT someone asks me why I keep drawing comics about Megan so I think about having sex with her and so I write "well I haven't had sex yet" oh my! how crazy!

MORE so suppose I am sitting at my computer and someone asks me if I want to go eat out at a restaurant tonight and I want to type "why, yes, I would love to eat out tonight" but (who can tell where this is going??) just at that moment My Beloved Megan walks into the room and asks me "why do you keep bugging me? what is your problem?" and I think "YOU! you, megan, are my problem, oh how I love you, megan" so I type "Why yes, I would love to eat you out tonight" and then BAM we've got the oral sex right there.

See how simple that is? Funny perhaps on a very fleeting, surface level reading. But it doesn't take much to look beneath that and see, oh yeah, this is really basic and simple and therefore stupid.

There's also a problem in this comic with the very awkward line between narrator and character - of course, the man at the computer is the narrator, with the opening explanation of the problem and then an illustration from his life. So far so good, except then we return to the narration at the end, separated from the story like the introduction is, yet...clearly a part of the story, but physically distinct from it. Perhaps a better way to have told the story would be closer to how I gave the examples above: Panel 1 would be "What I Meant To Type...", panel 2 would be "But Then..." with the giraffe coming out of the closet (so to speak?) and then Panel 3 would be "And So What Happened..." and you get the punchline there. As it is, the funniest line is the second to last one, not the last one, and so the humor is sort of softened.

Which way is the man facing in the last panel? I assume his head is turned around to look at the giraffe but you can't really tell.

Of course, it is not lost on me that today's comic features yet another reference to randall's favorite hobby, oral sex. It's not that I worry that he's too obsessed with it, I just wish he wouldn't share his obsession with his readers all the time, who maybe don't always want to be reading about someone blowing someone or something else?

And Last, the alt-text confirms for us all once more that Randall does read SMBC, making his copying of it the other day just that much worse. Honestly if you are going to refer to another comic, and steal its jokes, at least link to it along with your other "comics I enjoy." Maybe you could replace Perry Bible Fellowship, which has ended? Maybe?