A comedy masterclass

 I've mentioned once or twice before, over the years, how much I love Order of the Stick, and today's new strip is a great example of why! The unexpected, perfect, hilarious payoff to a running joke that's been going on all through the lengthy duration of the comic!

Rich Burlew has said before that he deliberately refrains from using the running gags for a long time before they suddenly come into the plot and take everyone by surprise, and it really works in a case like this! Honestly, it's a silly webcomic about Dungeons and Dragons (a game I don't play or particularly like) and over and over again it shows how to create brilliant works of literature! Just go and read it, if I haven't convinced you yet!

Old and new

 Continuing to read through a random pile of old Beano comics, I was struck by how one issue (No. 2170 - Feb 18th, 1984) highlights the problems of making up-to-date pop culture references in comics. It's an unusually reference-heavy issue, this one, starting on the centre pages with the Bash Street Kids.

Toots opens the story by recounting the latest news from Coronation Street - "And then Albert Tatlock said..."

Albert Tatlock, the grumpy old man played by Jack Howarth, had been appearing in the soap opera ever since its first episode in December 1960, and by the 1980s he was an iconic figure and a universally recognised name in Britain. But we weren't seeing very much of him on TV lately because of Jack Howarth's declining health (apparently his speech had got so indistinct that the episodes were written to have other characters repeat back what Albert said, to help the viewers understand) and in fact by the time this comic was published Albert Tatlock had already made his final appearance on the show, on January 23rd. Jack Howarth died, aged 88, on 31st March and the Coronation Street residents and viewers heard in May that Albert had died off-screen while away visiting his daughter.

So it seems Toots isn't quite keeping up to the minute with her TV-watching. On the other hand, Grandpa seems to be more in touch with the latest buzz!

Karma Chameleon, the big hit for Culture Club and their lead singer Boy George, came out in September 1983 and had spent six weeks at number one. It wasn't topping the charts any more by the time this comic was released, but it was definitely still current - at the 1984 Brit Awards, on the 21st of February, Karma Chameleon won the Song of the Year! So, probably accidentally, this Beano is very much citing a song that was constantly on the radios of the nation at the moment it was published!

Of course, Grandpa's whole thing is that he's in touch with what the kids like. It's a bit surprising to see that the same seems to apply to Pa Bear...

(You've got to love those "French tourists" who've really gone out of their way to display every single French stereotype but still aren't carrying around a set of French windows when Ted needs them)

Pa isn't generally aware of the latest pop music - he's very much the daft dad who can embarrass Ted by not understanding modern trends - but in this one he likes "listening to the new Boy George single." Two mentions in one week for Boy George! Maybe it was a deliberate push to get the kids talking about him, although the Brit Award must have been long since decided on by this time.

And it gets better - The Three Bears is supposedly set in America, and Culture Club took a bit longer to catch on over there. Karma Chameleon didn't come out until 1984, and in fact when this issue of the Beano came out, Karma Chameleon was number one in the Billboard Hot 100! Pa Bear, uncharacteristically enough, is astonishingly up-to-the-minute in defiance of the Beano's production timescales!

So in summary, Toots the young, happening Bash Street Kid is very behind the times; Grandpa the old man who likes kid stuff is much more with-it, but stupid old Pa Bear is the one who's really got his finger on the pulse of what's hot! Who woulda thunk it?

How they make TV

 I'm reading through all my old Beanos now. And I realise that my thoughts about this one haven't really changed since Christmas 1982. Is this actually how it works?

I mean, I've been on telly quite a bit since then, but I still know very little about the actual workings of the technology. When they show a film on TV, they don't actually point a TV camera at a big cinema screen, do they? They must do it by.... some other way? Right?

I suppose nowadays they do it with... computers, or something. But in 1982? Perhaps that was what they did. I should probably learn more about this.

First exciting thing that has happened

 Actually, the FA Cup Final today did have its share of exciting moments, but (with thanks to my brother for reminding me of it) isn't this Ball Boy adventure exactly what everyone dreams will happen during a televised big match?

There is such a thing as wisdom, as well as talent

 Presenting a story from the Masters of the Universe comic no. 28, from mid-April 1987. Probably. London Editions didn't see fit to put dates on their comics like normal comic-publishers, but no. 20 was the Christmas edition and it was fortnightly, and Easter 1987 was April 19th and there was a story with a visiting alien Easter bunny in this one (he was green and had antennae), so I think we can be fairly sure of when it was published.

Anyway, the page I'm interested in sharing is the last one, where we see one of the comic's regular one-page comedy strips that take a very long time to set up a very old punchline.

This one has always stuck with me, because Webstor is so cool in it. In the British comic, Webstor was awesome. He was the intelligent one of Skeletor's minions, and not shy about letting everyone know it. There was a great story a few issues before this one, in which Webstor and He-Man had to work together to solve an alien invader's puzzles, at the end of which He-Man urges Webstor to use his great brains and bravery for the heroic warriors. But Webstor declines, thinking to himself that he can never beat He-Man, but he's definitely got a chance of overthrowing Skeletor and taking command of the evil forces one day, so he'll stick with that. I really like this guy.

His presence even enlivens a gag like this one, which even at the time of first reading it I felt really doesn't work at all. The problem is that if you're going to tell this ancient joke, the subject of it needs to be recognisable as an animal, who wouldn't normally be expected to play 'blocker'. And Skeletor's minions are a gang of monsters and animal-creatures - M'Yower, walking around on two legs like that, just looks like another one of them. He's way too anthropomorphised for the punchline to hit home. The artist should have drawn him much more like a pet, to put the point across to the reader.

Anthropomorphic animals can do this joke perfectly well - here are my old friends Marmaduke Mouse and King Louie, back in 1946:

See - Ernie Hart knows his stuff. That's clearly a dog, while the lion and the mouse are clearly people. Webstor needs to have a word with the British comic artist, whoever it was.

Don't touch the sleeping pills, they mess with my head

 Just as a follow-up to the post the other day, when Simon and Florence do their duet it should really be Ship To Wreck. The general feeling of it fits nicely with Simon's sleep issues...

Recommendation

 I'm writing this more to remind myself than to inform the world of blog-readers, but if anyone needs an emergency plumber in Redditch, their first call should be to Plumbfix Solutions.

(Writing this kind of thing in my blog is the one and only way to preserve it for next time I'm trying to remember "who was that really good plumber?" This blog is eternal, and any other attempt to make a note for future reference will always get somehow lost. I know this from experience.)