Howdy y’all! Toon captain Hilary here and for all intents and purposes I’d like you to imagine me wearing a very large cowboy hat (pretty funny, right?). This week on Toonstack I asked my fellow cartoonists to send me their silly, send me their ridiculous, send me their STOOPIDEST cartoon they’ve ever drawn. The one that makes them laugh and likely, no one else.
No man is an island, unless you’re a cartoonist working on an island. Then you’re for sure an island and you have to make yourself laugh somehow. (This is a metaphor for how isolating cartooning is, do you get it?)
Stupid cartoons are surely my favorite because they’re the reason we all got into this game… we think we’re *pretty funny* when we’re sitting at our drawing desks, maniacally giggling, covered in black ink, sipping day old coffee and eating skittles. We scribble down something really friggin’ silly and then we pat ourselves on the back, but before we send it off to the important people in high places, sometimes we panic. Is this monkey eating ice cream… dare I say… too stupid? I’m not sure what cartoonists did before texting because this is the point where you get out your phone and ask everyone you know “too stupid Y or N?” Of course everyone responds N because they’re is no such thing as a cartoon that’s gone too far.
Most of us have so many stupid cartoons it was very difficult to whittle down to just one for this newsletter, but here, my friends, is the creme of the silliest crop…
I never sold this cartoon, but that didn’t stop me pitching it for years and years to everyone who would look at it. It made me laugh, and it makes no sense. It also makes perfect sense.
I don’t know! Sometimes pants are really big, OK? Fashion doesn’t make any sense, and the mind seeks order, so the mind comes up with the theory that pants must be big to house ferrets. I made this when I was living in Mexico and speaking only, and badly, in Spanish, so I was rusty on making jokes. Which, by the way, is not to say I’m not funny in Spanish; I’m hilarious, but mostly because of a willingness to augment my paltry vocabulary with slapstick. If you think this cartoon is good, you should see me slip on a papaya peel.
Table 6-3
Figure A (Cartoon) in conjunction with Figure B (Caption) cartoonist is using syntax in order to achieve a sentence based on the common phrase “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Heat is replaced with Jaguar, (Panthera onca) in order to reveal punchline, creating figure C (joke).
There will be a quiz next week.
When Hilary asked us to share our stupidest cartoons, I knew this was going to be a tall order because as IG user @ThisIsNotNaviedsMom recently commented, all my cartoons are “Genius!” and “What a handsome boy!” There’s a wonderful Ted Talk by Matt Diffee on how he comes up with great ideas for cartoons (spoiler alert: according to Matt, it’s like throwing sheep shit into the wind and hoping it lands). I don’t think this particular turd landed (although it made me laugh), but it did lead to a couple of smarter collaborations: Mona Lisa’s Pile & Mona Lisa Files. That’s what’s great about puns--it’s a generative process that can lead to some really funny and unexpected places. According to rhymezone.com, there are 67 words that rhyme with “smile.” So, 64 more cartoons to go!
Victor Hugo (or was it Hugo Weaving?) once wrote that “Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.” Soar, dear readers, soar.
This cartoon makes me giggle. I’m giggling right now, as I write this. I’m most likely giggling when you read this. I will never sell it anywhere and I don’t care. It’s possible no one else will ever giggle at it, and I don’t care. It’s super, super dumb - and I love it. (If you don’t get it, try saying it outloud. It’s that classic comedy switcheroo of replacing the word “self” with “shelf.”) I own that shelf and those books. I don’t own the bookends, photo, or succulents. His micro adjusting of the succulent is my favorite part. Man, succulents were everywhere for a while. His head is HUGE. I usually label my cartoon files with their creation number and a descriptive title that helps me search for them on my computer but I see here I labeled this one “432 Ha ha ha.jpeg.”
I think stupid is fine! When I think an idea is funny but ”too stupid”, it’s usually just silly, and I can live with that. I just try to execute it in a way that’s fun and surprising. Besides, drawing cartoons isn’t about showing people how smart you are. It’s about getting really really really really rich.
I almost drew actual animals blown up with air for the second booth. But that would less “stupid” and more “cruel.” It’s syntactically interesting to me that “Animal Balloons” could mean both “balloons for animals” and “balloons made of animals.” Does that mean “Balloon Animals” means both “animals made of balloons” and “animals for balloons?” What kind of animal would a balloon have? Probably a bird.
Probably the stupidest genre of cartoon I can’t get enough of is animals wearing human clothes. I have many stupid variations on this stupid theme, but here’s the thing: a t-rex? Has? Short? Arms! And were he to wear a shirt designed proportionally, well… but here I go doing the only thing worse than making a stupid joke, which is toonsplaining the stupid joke. Please, just look upon my works and despair.
It’s just really funny because he’s hitting a wall, literally.
I remember coming up with this idea and immediately thinking, that’s dumb. But then I just let myself start sketching it and while it’s still dumb, drawing raccoons drinking martinis and dancing was a delight!
For Your Pleasure: Cartoon Extras
Check out Amy Kurzweil’s cartoon classes and rambles on Patreon!
For more “genius” puns, check out Navied’s and the very punny @nihilist_penguin’s IG page @Unpearbles!
Sign up for Jason Chatfield’s free weekly toon newsletter!
See more cartoons from Ellis Rosen’s weekly Junk Drawer!
Diary comics from Hilary Campbell on Patreon!
Be sure to check out Shelby Lorman’s newsletter, Please Clap!
The same goes for Sofia Warren’s advice newsletter, You’re Doing Great!
I don’t know if you ever heard of the famous day when the old New Yorker cartoonists (young back then) got together while the then editor was on vacation and decided to try to see who could do the dumbest cartoon ever, and the winner was Crawford, with this one, and which I was sorry I couldn’t have the original of (it was sold!):
https://condenaststore.com/featured/have-a-seat-michael-crawford.html
Even when he was dying in the hospital, we would still find ourselves using the caption from that cartoon, it had become part of our vocabulary forever. I still hear it in my mind whenever I offer someone a seat.
Excellent theme and execution, everyone! I have a tangential theme to suggest: cartoons that no one else seems to get. And then don't explain them! For kicks!