So a Friend of Mine Posted a Bad Joke

McGarver's bad joke

Comic books are a load of fun. In my youth, before comics priced themselves out of my entertainment threshold, I liked Green Arrow and Green Lantern over on DC Comics. Usually, the comics I like aren't serious and deal with fantasy, fiction, and crude parallels to our world when they feel the need to be serious.

My favorite moment in comics doesn't involve super-heroes battling unbelievable super-villains, though. It's three panels that bring some issues surrounding comic books forward in a way anyone could understand. Making the same comment as a joke in Archie Comics, expecting a laugh would be terrible.

My favorite moment in comic books

Check out moment #44. It's poignant. The rest of the crossover wasn't as good as those three panels.

If Mr. McGarvey put some characters together, and had them interacting as characters should, then I might deal with his list of reasons coming out of an unreliable character's mouth. I don't find Zippy the Pinhead funny, either. The same friend who shared McGarvey's joke put up some Zippy strips as humor. I don't take issue with them because it's Zippy the Pinhead, and I leave them alone. I like Watchmen as a satirical graphic novel, and I can appreciate the Comedian as a horrible example to follow while he deliberately points that very fact out to anyone he contacts. The Comedian is the type of character who can foil and dismiss other characters who are smarter than he is with a few well-placed verbal jabs, and if they object too loudly, bullets. The Comedian is his own damn pig, and it's no surprise when he says piggish things that remind readers of someone the reader knows. The Comedian reminds me of Don Frye, who is funny because he's a walking, talking Comedian, just like Watchmen.

These are funny because Don Frye knows his reputation, and can make a joke partially at his own expense sometimes:

#1
#2
#3

Don Frye should expect people responding with hostility to what he says, but in the end, it's Don Frye's words that he said, not some nebulous group of people on the other side that never existed and never said anything on McGarvey's list. Right now, McGarvey's joke is a just stupid list of bullshit. I don't think it's funny at all. I'm glad nobody in my proximity read it. Aligning myself with that list would just roast my credibility as a person who believes reasonably in love between two men or two women.