I really struggled with this comic. I still feel like I need to explain it, which I think is a bad sign… I’m not going to though (must be strong…)
This one is to be continued…
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Some explanation might help as the last panel is unclear to me. Maybe fatherhood has turned my brain into seedy poo, but I have read that last panel 10 times and it’s a little unclear. I understand his thought bubble is an active entity, that you know, I love.
You may have an out though because as you say “This one is to be continued…”
Well, this whole web comic experiment I’m doing is all about trying to get better, so I might as well give the rundown of my thought process on this one, and try to figure out where I might have gone wrong.
It’s like this… Adam’s thought bubble is a character in itself… And thought bubbles in comics are basically windows into what the characters are thinking. This joke might be referencing my own thought process, which is where the confusion would be coming in for other people. Here’s what I was thinking:
Panel One: Adam is trying to think of something… This is causing his thought bubble to grow larger, to the point it casts the characters into shade.
Panel Two: Adam’s thought bubble grows too large, and becomes unstable.
Panel Three: His thoughts collapse onto him.
Panel Four: He’s stuck in the middle of his thought bubble… In essence, thinking about himself? Fred sees this and makes a joke about Adam’s predicament… He does it in the old school method of punchline delivery… Like something out of an eighties sitcom.
Panel Five: Fred thinks he’s hilarious, so he jots down his joke. I don’t know how you work, but whenever I’m going through my day to day existence and I think up something I find particularly clever, I think, “I should write that down.” Nine times out of ten it’s not funny, but you never know. Fred likes to try to make jokes too…
Maybe the pacing is off on this one, or maybe I tried to cram too complex an idea into too small a space.
Nope, the pacing is fine. I just figured it out what is wrong…it’s the ZING. That throws off my understanding of “Fred thinks he’s hilarious, so he jots down his joke.” A double HEH, or “GOOD ONE”
It’s the ZING.
I like the Zing.
The tree in the first panel makes it difficult to see that the thought bubble is what’s making the shadow. It makes me think that they’re just sitting under the tree.
yeah, maybe that’s a bit of what was bugging me… I originally had just the kids and the thought bubble, but it was a smaller bubble and there was too much white space so I thought I’d add some foreground, then later I decided to change the bubble to illustrate it’s growth…. and I just ignored the tree.
Maybe I’ll try another version without the tree…
OVERTHINKING ALERT! WE HAVE DEFCON 5 OVERTHINKING! It’s a slapstick gag that toys with the conventions of comic strip life. He’s so self absorbed, he absorbed himself. Funny! (And I like “zing!” myself.) Let’s remember how there are things that crack us up that other people look at us like we’ve got three heads. Some of my favorite comics I’ve posted have gone out to the sound of dying crickets, whereas ones I thought were goofy one-offs got hilarious responses. I like this Jet Packs a lot…it’s like slapstick metaphysical comedy.
I didn’t totally get it until I read the explanation but I like it. Looking forward to the continuation. Maybe this has been addressed but is Adam supposed to be part synthetic or just an imaginative kid with a helmet? I was wondering after the strip about his father reprogramming him.
@Tom: Thanks Tom, that was a very nerdy alert. I know I do the over-thinking… I can’t help it.
@Dave: he’s part synthetic for sure… I’m going to go into it more later on… when I figure it all out… The helmet is pretty much part of his head, and his brain is part organic, part synthetic.
What if you put a little sub title at the top of the first panel to the affect of “Adam’s Thought Process Takes Control” or something in a narrator’s point of view. It’s sort’ve cheap but it really sort’ve gives the reader some insight.
Add-on…I think the joke and the punchline are good. I think the confusion was in the whole “why is he thinking so hard…”
This may be one of those cartoons that would work better in the Sunday format. You can steadily show the thought balloon getting bigger and bigger over his head until it collapses around him.
@worth: Yeah, I sot of thought the same thing… I think this was a case of trying to cram a complex idea in to a small space. I’ve got to learn that sometimes I can go bigger when I need to.
@ Wit: Yeah… it was an abrupt start for sure… I can’t help but feel that I just handled the whole thing a little awkwardly… I think I might post a couple variations later…
yeah, without the explanation i didn’t really totally understand, but it’s fairly amusing nonetheless. It reminds me of people in my high school making obvious puns that are terrible but still funny.
also, the art style is fantastic.
yeah, that’s exactly what gets to me… that the comic can’t completely stand alone without the accursed explanation. Hopefully tomorrows comic will stand alone (except for the fact that it’s a continuation of this one).
I think it is missing the facal exspetion of the guy in the though bubble. That is what makes one liners fun in real life.
I don’t think the third panel works and the fourth is weird because it’s not that funny to bother writing down for later use. It’s mildly humorous at best. I think the title of your post “Heavy thoughts” lends itself to this strip much more conducive than the punch line in the third panel.
Panel 1- think think think ..
Panel 2 – put something heavy in the bubble, like an anvil , or fill the bubble with the word “THINK” and show it start to sag
Panel 3-FWOOPH!
Panel 4- have him crawling out of a hole, as though a bomb hit the ground “You’ve got to stop thinking such heavy thoughts.”
*having him stuck floating in a thought bubble doesn’t visually describe him being crushed by heavy thoughts
Thanks for the feedback. I’ve been just adding the titles as afterthoughts (pun not intended) on most of these. I should probably consider thinking through them more. (oh geez…)
Your concept would work better with that title certainly, but when I used the title, I was visualizing it more in terms of relative weight. What I mean is that thought bubbles generally float about the characters, but my idea in this joke was that adam lets his mind wander and it grows out of his control. Admittedly, the ‘think think think’ throws the whole thing off and takes it in the wrong direction. I’m reworking this one, so that it fits with the jokes that come after it, and I think I’ve smoothed it out a bit. The fourth panel isn’t supposed to be that funny. It’s supposed to be cheesy. The attempted humor in this joke was to show two self absorbed characters. One who lets his thoughts/ imagination run wild, and one who’s in love with his own wit. I will admit I did stumble a bit on this joke.
@Phil: Nice art by the way.