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Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.
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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