About This Time of Year
Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.
Features
Hot Posts
A Message From Devcat
Devcat is watching over, but if you notice any problems contact the editors and Devcat will be notified and deployed immediately.
Recent Comments
on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to IcelandHrm. I always felt like the experience was an epiphenomenon of the deeper quest for a dinner jacket…
on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to IcelandIt's more of an 'experience'. The old way was a sales-guy talking about the fabric/color/style and t…
on Paper: Inflation and the 2024 US Presidential ElectionEdward Bennett Williams, probably the greatest trial lawyer of the generation before mine, said that…
on Open Mic for the week of 11/18/2024I am relatively hawkish on Ukraine since they proved their willingness to fight for their independen…
Comics
-
November 23, 2024
-
November 22, 2024
-
November 21, 2024
-
November 20, 2024
More Comments
on Open Mic for the week of 11/18/2024
on ICC Follows Through on Arrest Warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu & Others
on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to Iceland
on Weekend Plans Post: On a Plane to Iceland
on Open Mic for the week of 11/18/2024
on All the President’s Nominees: The Legion of Groom
on Paper: Inflation and the 2024 US Presidential Election
on The Mandate That Wasn’t
I don’t find these that funny.Report
Before the Great Depression, humor wasn’t really developed. We had Aristophanes there and that kinda got us off on the right foot but we didn’t really have funny again until Voltaire.
Which is kinda crazy, when you think about it.
Sure, Clare Briggs has more of an observational style of humor but we are lucky enough to have had The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes and Dilbert when we look at his strips.
It’s easy to forget that he’s doing this stuff from scratch.Report
Also, as Calvin’s dad pointed out, back then color didn’t exist. Y’know, how those old photographs are actually color photos of a black and white world.
It was tough to have humor in a world of grays.Report
Different ones are going for different things. Some don’t intend to be funny at all (like the one about the dog being left in the woods). Some are just “familiar” in the “I’ve been there” sense. Others are Norman Rockwellian type romanticism of country or city life. Some… I’m not sure what they are. (I haven’t run those yet.)
Some are the “set-up/punch-line” formula that is almost ubiquitous today. Back then the comics hadn’t settled on that particular formula. A lot of the other big cartoonists of the day were odd by our standards. Rube Goldberg and his comics of complicated contraptions are an example. George Herriman’s Krazy Kat strip laid the groundwork for animal-centric comics that became popular but a lot of them are like “Where’s the joke?” if that’s what you’re looking for.
Which, to each their own. My interest in these strips is at least partially familial. Some of them really are laughers, some strike a chord, some are peeks into a century ago. If it interest you great. No problem if it doesn’t.Report
I always look at them from a “plus ca change” sort of way. They are by turns funny, sad and human.Report
I don’t think anybody does. I assume they’re presented more as a historical curiosity and cultural artifact.Report