There are a lot of approaches to comedy in comics, and I wanted to get an episode together about that. Humor is OFTEN rooted in all kinds of cultural trends: current events, age groups, time periods, and styles, so it can be hard when people ask about how to learn to write comedy to find a way to talk about it! But Bob and Delphina are going to do their best today to break down at least their experience and approaches, and hopefully that’ll help you too

In this Episode:




• Let’s talk about short-form comedy!  What is it, what kinds have you made, what are the basics you reach for to make short-form comedy work, and what are the challenges?
• Let’s talk about comedy in a long-form narrative! How is this different from a short-form/gag-a-day approach, and how do you make a comedic character work?
• What is your advice to someone who is making an effort to make a fully-comedy-genre comic or something that weaves comedic moments into the narrative, but maybe the jokes aren’t engaging or a character you think is VERY funny is not landing with the readers?

We hope you've enjoyed our 2025 podcast season of Screen Tones! We're going to be taking a break to recharge and integrate a few changes into our show, and we want to know what webcomic questions YOU have for us on an upcoming special Q&A stream! Send us your questions at screentonescast.com/contact, and hey!

We rely on the generosity of listeners, so if you enjoy what we do, please consider dropping by our Ko-Fi or Patreon to help us keep things going.

Thanks again for an amazing 2025, and have a wonderful holiday season (Halloween is a holiday, right? Right!)

----

Episode Release Date: September 24, 2025

Episode Credits:

Christina Major (@delphina2k) - she/her, sombulus.com

Bob Appavu - any, https://intothesmokecomic.com https://www.demonoftheunderground.com

----

The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

00:00.68

Delphina

Alright, here we go. Hello and welcome to Screen Tones, where we talk about anything and everything webcomics. Today we're going to be talking about comedy in webcomics.

00:12.17

Delphina

I'm Delphina, use she-her pronouns, and I make the webcomics Sombulus.

00:18.05

Bob

And I'm Bob. I use any pronouns and I make the web comics demon of the underground and into the smoke.

00:24.86

Delphina

Okay, so there are a lot of approaches to comedy in webcomics. um I wanted to get together an episode about that because, yeah, it's good to talk about.

00:35.67

Delphina

um Humor is often rooted in all kinds of cultural trends, current events, age groups, time periods, and styles. So it can be really hard when people ask,

00:46.76

Delphina

about how to learn to write comedy um to talk about it because there's there's no there's so many different ways to approach it but um bob and i are going to try how to do our best today to break down at least our experiences and approaches and hopefully that'll help you too um there's there's just so many things that you can do and yeah i'm excited to to talk about um at least some of them so um I think the thing that I think about when I first think about comedy is like the short form things like the the traditional newspaper style um things that may or may not have recurring characters like Calvin Hobbes or the far side.

01:27.06

Delphina

um And that's like often people's first exposure to comedy sort of in comics. Right.

01:35.95

Bob

Yeah, I would say so. I mean, that's probably where I first discovered comedy in the form of comics and realized that it was something that I enjoyed and wanted to try out.

01:47.59

Bob

um You just kind of jogged my memory because yeah, back in like, junior high, high school. Those were the first types of comics I actually wrote. And now, you know, I do primarily long form web comics, but I still also do a lot of like one shot comedic things.

02:05.29

Bob

um I think the like the horizontal format we think about with the old newspapers, it's harder now because You know, with with everyone primarily being on like a vertical phone screen, they, you know, but, you know, you just oriented vertically and all of a sudden same jokes and it reads differently.

02:18.84

Delphina

who

02:26.47

Bob

um You know, I do a lot of, oh sorry, go ahead.

02:28.22

Delphina

Yeah. Yeah. i'd Like, cause the, the four panel comics in, in Japan um were kind of traditionally stacked one on top of the other, because that's a more natural reading order for that country.

02:41.02

Bob

oh yeah.

02:41.19

Delphina

So I feel like that kind of translates to when we adapt that.

02:41.29

Bob

Yeah.

02:46.11

Bob

Yeah, definitely. I completely forgot about that. And I remember when I would read a manga and like you'd even have like the little kind of side stories, like vertical, like sometimes on the side of a comic page.

02:55.37

Delphina

Yeah.

02:57.74

Bob

I love that. And, um you know, my primary platform for short form is still Tumblr.

02:59.27

Delphina

yeah

03:05.49

Bob

It just does really well on that platform still. And it's one of the few platforms that is like a social media platform with viral dynamics that also allows for vertical scroll format.

03:20.51

Bob

If I were, you know, posting on something like blue sky or Reddit or Instagram, you know, I would do more of like a, like there you do a lot of kind of like four squares in a square shape.

03:31.81

Delphina

Mm-hmm.

03:32.66

Bob

um But for Tumblr, I just really love doing the vertical because it gives you like, it's so good for setting up a punchline because with, with the scroll, you have a reveal. And so people can't even get a hint of it ahead of time.

03:49.01

Bob

And it's really effective for that.

03:50.82

Delphina

Yeah. Oh, gosh, I hadn't even thought about that because you're right. Like, then you can kind of hide the punchline in a way that you really couldn't with like a horizontal comic. Like if you were reading it all on one page, like you could still kind of get a peek at what's going to happen at the end if you're looking out of your peripheral vision and not necessarily seeing what was happening. But that's true.

04:11.99

Bob

Yeah, I have to force myself not to jump ahead when I'm reading comedy comics that are not vertically oriented. Like it's an exercise of willpower there.

04:26.22

Bob

So, yeah.

04:27.30

Delphina

Yeah, and I like what you're saying too about Tumblr being really nice because things can kind of go viral and kind of get passed around too. I feel like short form really has that advantage like because we both work on like long form comics too and and you can't necessarily share like

04:44.35

Bob

Yeah, exactly.

04:47.09

Delphina

Any old page out of the archive and have it make sense to anybody, but short form you can like if you're just doing strip comics or something like that you could pass those around on just about any social media platform and have them kind of take on a life of their own.

04:52.92

Bob

yeah exactly

05:03.45

Bob

Exactly. That's what's so handy about it because you don't rely on any sort of external context. Everything is right there in the post. And then the person who shares it from you Like they may know you, they know the type of work you do.

05:19.77

Bob

The next person they pass it on to, they don't need to know anything about you in order to understand. I mean, sometimes it helps if they kind of know your brand or your vibe. They're like, oh yeah, this is that person's work.

05:30.97

Bob

But they will not need to know, you know, what happened in this character's childhood in order to get the joke.

05:37.28

Delphina

Mm-hmm.

05:39.31

Bob

um Yeah, so it's really handy for people social media in a way that long form isn't. And so I feel like they can compliment each other in a way where like if you kind of struggle to get your long form comic posts out there, you can sometimes do like a little short form bit and get some eyes on your work.

06:03.00

Delphina

Yeah, I think so too. um I feel like you do want to try to be a little more regular if that's like an actual marketing tactical approach that you're doing because like, I feel like i I don't tend to do that so much, but I do have a couple of short form comics that are just kind of floating around on on Tumblr getting um getting passed around and people enjoy them, but they don't necessarily like attach them to me because I don't make a regular thing of it. I don't have like a brand around like,

06:33.34

Delphina

what those sorts of comics so like people will follow me and then they're like wait what's the Sombulus thing I don't that's not a joke ah so like so I think there's um like they're fun to do and they're fun to get a little bit of of attention from but um at least in my experience um getting that to transfer over to like readership for a long form comic is kind of hit and miss um

06:40.30

Bob

Oh.

07:02.89

Bob

Yeah, I feel like I kind of fall in a middle range because I am not like a full time short form comic creator. But I do them, I think, regularly enough that I've been able to maintain some sort of audience for them and also translate some of them into my webcomic.

07:22.50

Delphina

who

07:23.87

Bob

It's never, ever, like, a majority of them. And that's the thing is you have to be, like, emotionally okay with the idea that if you have, like, 30,000 followers that maybe only, like,

07:37.71

Bob

five or 10,000 of them actually like your long form webcomic and the others are all just there for, for the one-off jokes.

07:45.38

Delphina

yes

07:45.58

Bob

And that's fine. Because the thing is that when you have one of those posts go viral, you just like, you end up having lots more people kind of just incidentally see your page, come back to see what it is that you're all about.

08:06.05

Bob

And yes, they came because they liked that joke, but people are complex. Sometimes they like more than one thing. So some of them will translate over. And if your main focus is the comedy and humor stuff, well, then then it's just, you know, win-win for you because, you know, the the difficult part is being consistent because everyone, you know, I've gotten this sometimes from people who are like, oh yeah, like it must be so easy if you just do like a like a joke comic to to go viral.

08:40.75

Bob

um And it's like, yeah, it's easy to go viral once.

08:44.09

Delphina

Mm-hmm.

08:44.66

Bob

um But ah to actually be consistently on and consistently funny Like that's a lot to ask of someone. And like, that's why I say I'm kind of in a middle ground where I don't think I have the steam.

09:00.34

Bob

And also this is not my primary project. So I can't just be funny all the time. So, yeah, it looks easy on the outside, but there is some challenge there.

09:09.76

Delphina

Yeah. And I like what you said, too, about how emotional you have to be emotionally ready for that, because I feel like sometimes I'm looking at the story that I spent like 15 years on developing these characters. I love them. I want people to know them.

09:25.37

Delphina

And I'm only getting five likes on them, but I'm getting 100,000 on this other thing.

09:30.24

Bob

Yeah.

09:31.44

Delphina

And it's like, you have to understand that it's not going to translate one to one. And it's not anything that's wrong with you. It's not anything that's wrong with the style of thing that you're doing.

09:44.51

Delphina

But it does get you... into people's peripheral it does get you kind of into like okay incidentally you might like this other thing that i do and you know just keeping consistent with both of those things um can can kind of reap some rewards if that's the way you're going plus it's just fun like i feel like everybody like we're we have some kind of weird

09:48.91

Bob

yeah

10:04.48

Bob

Yeah.

10:08.47

Delphina

commentary to talk about our cat or our audience or whatever.

10:10.44

Bob

Yeah.

10:11.27

Delphina

And we just were just like, you know what, I can make a little comic about this. It, you know, it's funny to me, it's gonna be funny to somebody else, maybe and I'll just put it into the world and see what happens.

10:21.98

Delphina

And like, there's just a joy and doing it in and of itself. In my experience.

10:27.53

Bob

Yeah, exactly. It's like, what, you expect me to just not make jokes ever?

10:31.38

Delphina

I know.

10:31.80

Bob

Like, I'm not that type of person. I am going to make jokes whether you like it or not. So yeah, I have this theory, like, because I completely feel what you're talking about, where it's like, it is just so much easier to get traction.

10:48.58

Bob

You know, sometimes it's like you do this... this little joke and you do it in like a half hour, you're doing it in like two hours and it gets so much feedback and it goes so far. And then you put all this love into your long form comic and it's taken you like 16 hours to do this page and, and you put it on and it's like, yeah, so, so many or so fewer people interact with it.

11:13.86

Bob

But my, my, the way I look at it is, Any, like when I'm analyzing long form stories, you usually have a combination of literary elements. There's craft, there's intellectual stuff, there's world building, there's all this complexity.

11:33.21

Bob

And then it's interwoven with these sort of lizard brain moments that compel the emotion and drive things forward and create a sense of urgency and humor long, sorry, short form comedy.

11:49.50

Bob

is like all lizard brains.

11:51.57

Delphina

Hmm. Hmm.

11:51.77

Bob

And social media is geared for lizard brain and lizard brain always performs best on social media. And so it's just like, you know, it's not necessarily a marker of the comedy being better quality than your other stuff, it's that it's lizard brain.

12:10.32

Bob

Like, and same thing with, you know, if you're doing a lot of romances, very driven by lizard brain, a lot of horror, fear, suspense, and even cute stuff, very, very lizard brain.

12:19.55

Delphina

who

12:21.10

Bob

And so it's like, it's this instinctive reaction that people have. Even if they don't want to, you will find so many people who are ashamed that this like lowbrow joke made them laugh and they'll admit it in the Tumblr notes and stuff. But um But that's the thing about the lizard brain, people respond so strongly to it because it's almost involuntary and um it's emotionally manipulative. So you have to use it responsibly.

12:48.21

Delphina

Yes, absolutely. It's true. Like, everything is just... You only have so much time to process it. You only have like kind of your gut reaction to go by.

13:01.76

Delphina

And yeah, of course, like you see a cute video of a cat like everybody has that kind of lizard brain response to it because like that's that's what you know. And that's like it's not shameful to to tap into that unless like you're you're actually trying to incite something bad.

13:18.23

Delphina

Don't do that.

13:18.52

Bob

Yeah, yeah.

13:19.95

Delphina

Yeah. um So I do want to talk about too, because we've touched on it a little bit, like just the long form narrative, because I think there's also a side of like, okay, I don't necessarily want to do ah short form comedy work as my main project, but I do have elements of comedy. Comedy is a genre that I explore in my long form narrative.

13:42.69

Delphina

And um I just want to talk about how that's different from a short form or gag a day approach, like um in terms of how, how you work that into a long form narrative that, that has to make sense.

13:59.48

Bob

Yeah, that is such a good question because, yeah I write these like epic length supernatural fantasy, like, queer webcomics, but they are also extremely humor driven.

14:12.83

Bob

Like the plot is serious, but a lot of the moment by moment stuff is lighthearted or comedic or, and I do have some actual laugh out loud moments.

14:13.37

Delphina

Mm-hmm.

14:24.83

Bob

um And so there's a lot of balancing the tone. There's a lot of setting expectations upfront. um There's a lot of, um like like, I mean, i opened my webcomic Into the Smoke with a joke. I actually opened Demon of the Underground with a joke too.

14:45.31

Bob

um i I make my first jokes fairly early on so people know that this is kind of the expectation. And then, yeah and then when a serious moment comes, if it's meant to be truly serious,

14:54.47

Delphina

Yes.

15:01.02

Bob

You know, I let it be serious, but there is some, I wanna hear like your approach too, because I feel like there's a lot of juggling and like Sombulus is like, I feel like you do a really good job with that.

15:13.28

Delphina

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's absolutely balancing because I love puns. I love ah just kind of the surreal humor.

15:23.29

Delphina

I have an entire chapter about flying toasters.

15:23.86

Bob

Yeah.

15:26.16

Bob

I love that one.

15:26.31

Delphina

um Yeah. um And um and character but like character moments, like I kind of qualify that as as like, you know, this character, you know what they're going to react to do like so so what you have some of the humor is also based on like knowing the characters and enjoying the interaction between the characters um and i feel like you know i'll use my palette as an example you meet sydney she know you know she's stubborn and she doesn't know when to step back or leave things alone

16:04.39

Delphina

because she has this very overblown sense of justice. And that gets really awkward. And you know she gets her into hopefully humorous situations that she could totally get out of if she learned to chill.

16:16.71

Delphina

But she can't if she doesn't. And so um And so that's kind of a staple of humor for me is like, you can watch a character with grating or sometimes annoying traits.

16:28.77

Delphina

um And you can, you can make that work if at any moment they could step back and not double down, but they do choose to double down and the results are funny.

16:40.59

Bob

Yeah.

16:43.60

Delphina

um And it's a balance though, because you can also have a situation where somebody does that and like they succeed too much. And so the audience just gets annoyed or say they, they,

16:55.35

Bob

yeah

16:57.45

Delphina

They're just jerky to their friends and it's not fun to watch the interplay between them and the people around them. So you have to kind of balance that with more likable, sincere moments in my experience.

17:10.58

Delphina

um I also have two brother characters, one who is very strict with himself and one who is extremely irresponsible. um So if I play that too serious, it's either going to be annoying to watch the goofy one making problems while the responsible one cleans them up because nobody likes that situation.

17:30.15

Bob

yeah

17:30.29

Delphina

Like everybody's been in a situation where like somebody like did something stupid and you have you're stuck with the damage to clean it up um or you don't want to have a situation where one looks like they're bullying the other so I have to show that both the responsible one and the irresponsible one have those are double-edged swords they can both backfire I have to show that sometimes the risk taking pays off and sometimes playing it safe pays off and that they're both likable on some level so like

18:02.88

Delphina

nothing can get like too, too animosity driven. I feel like it's tricky. It's like, try to talk it out.

18:09.82

Bob

Yeah.

18:11.18

Delphina

It's tricky.

18:12.11

Bob

Yeah, no, I completely get that because like one of the one of my things is i am not a fan of mean-spirited humor. And I wanna say this as like, you know, there are people who are fans of mean-spirited humor.

18:20.57

Delphina

Yeah.

18:24.33

Bob

So I'm not saying like, don't write mean-spirited humor. I'm saying, know your audience. um Like if i were like, like I know that if I read Sambulus, I can count on the series not being mean-spirited.

18:38.56

Bob

And it's just kind of like where you have that trust. And so I think a lot of it is about being consistent with the flavor and type of humor you're dealing with.

18:51.19

Bob

Because if you set your expectation up front that, yeah, these characters are going to be kind of lightly ribbing each other a lot, or maybe really ribbing each other hard, you're going to attract readers who like that type of comedy.

19:03.79

Bob

And then... You know, if you're someone who has been writing darker comedy and then you suddenly switch to something that's a little too sincere, your readers are probably going to feel that it's not genuine feeling or that it's too saccharine or something like that.

19:19.29

Bob

But on the other hand, if you've built up this kind of more gentle, sincere type of comedy throughout your series, and then suddenly you have this really mean spirited joke, your readership is not going to find that joke funny because you haven't cultivated that type of readership.

19:35.69

Bob

So I feel like you're right, it's a lot of balancing and it's a lot of being consistent because comedy is also a style. So making sure that you're, you know, kind of delivering within the same range, I think is important.

19:50.75

Delphina

Yeah, absolutely. It's just, it's so easy to go into, like, ah this pattern of, like, you you make these jokes, and you make these jokes, and I feel like sometimes that's happening, too, like, when you, like, it can happen with romance or something, like, you're you're shipping these characters, and you're shipping these characters, and then they're, like, then, like,

20:11.03

Delphina

you make a like post like, well, they're not together. Why did you think you're together? It's like, well, I saw all things, saw these indicators that you wanted me to ship them.

20:17.11

Bob

Yeah.

20:19.48

Delphina

Like, I don't know.

20:20.18

Bob

yeah

20:20.64

Delphina

That's the kind of readership you attracted. And it's, it's so, um, I think the same is true for comedy. You do attract a certain readership depending on how you start out and how you continue.

20:32.33

Delphina

And, um, And yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of serious moments, especially right now in the plot of Zombulus. um But I do try to make a space where we can laugh and we can and like to remember what we enjoyed about the characters. And that helps us like root for them in the end, I think it is what I come back to.

20:53.17

Delphina

um Just being able to say like, yeah, I enjoy spending time with these characters. They're amusing me. And um yeah, it's... Gosh, it's so weird.

21:06.12

Bob

No, I totally get that, though, because even when you have those more serious moments, you ask, like, what is it that makes the story enjoyable at its core?

21:19.73

Bob

And I think balancing the more serious with the more comedic, um you know, a lot of people feel like you kind of have to keep them really separate.

21:33.30

Bob

I think there are ways that you can kind of weave them together as long as you're not, for example, using comedy to cheapen a really impactful moment or kind of diffuse it. Like if something really important happened, you kind of want to let that. Well, okay, depending on the type of story you're writing, if you want that moment to have resonance as a serious moment, then diffusing it with a joke can, you know, kind of ruin it. And likewise, you know, I've seen some, I think I've seen this more probably in like TV than in comics, but you'll see someone like...

22:13.17

Bob

make this really funny joke. And then like immediately after that, something just totally devastating happens. And that can be really effective to like jar and shake the reader. But it's one of those tricks that you can only do once because you have kind of broken trust there. And then none of your future jokes will land the same way after that one.

22:36.37

Bob

So if you're going to do something like that, you have to be so committed to it and so committed to that moment of really, jarring the reader because yeah there are some things where you can only do it once i think

22:48.60

Delphina

Yeah, absolutely. Like spoilers for Serenity whatever. But yeah, there are there are ways to use comedy that like sir to make people one of my favorite scenes in Zombulous really is is one where like im I have ah yeah just a character confronting and um ah like a kind of emotionally abusive like family member and he's like the jokey character and like this is when you find out that like the jokes are like just trying to avoid his real emotions and so you get to the point where he's

23:24.94

Bob

Oh yeah.

23:28.79

Delphina

But like his friend is asking, hey, are you OK? Like what? That was really bad. Like what's what's going on? And he's just like now he's trying to make jokes and they're not funny.

23:40.16

Delphina

And it's like, oh, oh, no.

23:41.18

Bob

Ah.

23:44.55

Delphina

OK, I get what's going on. And I think the readership really responded to that. It's one of my favorite scenes. um So that's something that you can set up.

23:55.04

Delphina

with a character that's comedic too, because I feel like that's the thing too. um A comedic character doesn't have to be shallow.

24:03.47

Bob

Yeah, exactly.

24:03.72

Delphina

um ah compete Like having that, there's a reason that we reached a comedy in real life um To like deal with our problems or describe their problems there's kind of black humor situations where you're using this to describe a serious issue and deal with it.

24:21.01

Delphina

And so that's an area that I think is fun to explore as well.

24:26.38

Bob

Definitely. Like, I feel like it's almost universally true that people who are very comedic and joke a lot are kind of using it as a shield for something.

24:38.55

Bob

And maybe the something they're shielding isn't so deep, but sometimes it's pretty deep. And I feel like that's so powerful in character development. Like, for me, I feel like I have fewer characters who themselves are like,

24:53.39

Bob

very funny and making jokes. i I probably do more like situational comedy, but, um but when you have a character who is that sort of lighthearted, you know, kind of jokey, I do have some of them actually.

25:06.78

Bob

And they do tend to be the ones with the darkest backstories, because I think that humor is sort of a defense mechanism sometimes. and also it just has the effect of soothing and self soothing. So it's something that you can use within your characters. And then you can also kind of use it with your readers be like, it's okay, it's okay, here's a joke.

25:27.88

Bob

you know

25:29.08

Delphina

Yeah, it's

25:29.28

Bob

But yeah.

25:31.29

Delphina

It's true. and I really resonate with those characters. I feel like um there's a level of sincerity that you can get out of those characters that only comes from getting to know them as like, you know, they're the funny one, they're the nice one.

25:45.55

Delphina

And, um and so it's, it's something that I encourage people to to look for and try to, to utilize.

25:45.62

Bob

Yeah.

25:55.36

Bob

Yeah, definitely.

25:57.06

Delphina

Yeah. So, um so yeah, ah like, and sometimes I'm looking at people or people come to me for advice about like, they're trying to make an effort to make either a full comedy genre comic or something that weaves comedic moments into the narrative.

26:14.53

Delphina

um But maybe the jokes are not as engaging or a character that they think is very funny is not landing with the readers. How, how do you go about troubleshooting that?

26:25.95

Bob

You know, that is an interesting question because there are so many different ways to look at it and ways to ask yourself, like, why did that not land?

26:38.53

Bob

And so for me, I actually like... I enjoy watching standup comedy and I listen to some like podcasts with comedians where they like talk about the craft and they talk about what they do and they talk about, you know, going to different shows and workshop, work and workshopping the joke, you know, trying like different tweaks on it with different audiences until they get it just right.

27:06.56

Bob

I feel like artists maybe don't really think about the idea that they can Rework a joke or rerelease something or refine it. And I think that's one thing. But before you do that, you kind of have to figure out where you went wrong in the first place.

27:22.53

Bob

And I think the first question I would ask is, um are you even sending it to the right audience? Like, is this a Tumblr joke that you're posting on Reddit and like the Reddit crowd is different or, you know, is it, you know, ah like, have you just not found the type of reader who reacts to it? So I kind of feel like a good first step is like, who are the types of people that you think should have found this funny?

27:53.32

Bob

And do they find it funny?

27:55.92

Delphina

Yeah.

27:56.13

Bob

And yeah, so like, that's my first thought. I have a few thoughts, but I want to hear, I want to hear what you think too.

28:03.64

Delphina

Sure. Yeah, I feel like a lot of comedy is setting up expectations.

28:05.49

Bob

Yeah,

28:08.59

Delphina

And so we all... um Like, you can but visualize like a kid in elementary school, five years old or something like that, and you say a funny word like butts or farts or whatever, and that's funny to them because they...

28:22.67

Bob

funny to me too, I guess.

28:25.19

Delphina

Yeah. But like the thing is that you weren't expecting me to say butts or farts are there because like that's not a thing I would normally say on a podcast.

28:33.36

Bob

Exactly.

28:34.35

Delphina

um And so similarly, when you're very young, you don't have the life experience to hear swearing yet.

28:34.51

Bob

Yeah.

28:41.73

Delphina

You've been told that you shouldn't swear. And so all your peers can't swear. None of your parents or responsible adults can swear and or use funny words. So when you hear it,

28:53.96

Delphina

like for the first time, for the first couple times, that's going to be funny to you because that defies your expectations. And so the older you get, the the more experience you get, of course, and the less that, you know butts and farts are going to be funny to you because, okay, I've 've heard that a million times at this point.

29:00.26

Bob

Mm-hmm.

29:12.07

Delphina

What's new? That's not necessarily funny to me.

29:13.92

Bob

Yeah. yeah

29:16.20

Delphina

So, yeah, Look for where you're setting up expectations. Of course, if you're using a real life sort of scenario or backdrop for your comic, um then you can draw from real life. But if you're making a fantasy or sci fi genre, you might have to do a little more.

29:35.01

Delphina

work to establish what's the normal here what's the and um and sometimes establishing hey this is normal in this world isn't that funny that it's normal not normal in our world is a form of humor as well so um so figuring that out i think there's um a comedy concept called the rules of threes

29:47.62

Bob

yeah

29:55.87

Delphina

um where like if you're setting up a joke, you say one thing and you say the next thing and those form a pattern and then you break the pattern in the third thing.

29:56.37

Bob

ah yeah

30:05.05

Delphina

And that's kind of an easy way to conceptualize. You're setting up the pattern by talking about this. We're talking about um dog yeah or owning a pet. So you're saying...

30:15.74

Delphina

Yeah, I know somebody who owns a dog and a cat and a sense of ennui. And so like, that's it. You weren't, you were expecting another, the third thing to be another animal, but I, I just threw some sort of curve vol ball at you with, know,

30:31.34

Delphina

the sense of one we like, oh, okay. um so that can be a way to approach the setting up of at least an individual joke, like on a micro scale, but also blowing that up to a macro scale and establishing what's normal, what's normal, then break the normal.

30:34.38

Bob

Okay.

30:48.85

Bob

It's funny because I feel like you've just illuminated to me in real time that I respond very strongly to the unexpected. That is also what I like to do in my comedy.

31:01.49

Bob

um it's i learned something today. That's so, so amazing.

31:07.38

Delphina

Yeah, it works.

31:07.87

Bob

But

31:08.54

Delphina

Like if you kind of think about it, like you you need at least two things to set up the pattern and then you break it

31:10.59

Bob

Yeah.

31:14.92

Bob

Yeah, yeah, that is so, so good. I never really, like, other than instinctively, I hadn't really picked up on that before. And it's absolutely true.

31:25.55

Bob

um That, wow. Yeah, so um one thing that I also kind of think about, sorry.

31:36.93

Bob

One second.

31:38.57

Delphina

No worries. I could pause it.

31:41.28

Bob

So one thing that I also think about a lot is how does the art style serve the joke or the comedic element of the situation and vice versa? Because the actual content, like if like, let's say that the joke is like what's actually being said by a character, that's so separate from like the art style and the setup and the pacing.

32:08.96

Bob

And how you treat the visuals might be what's holding back the actual substance of the joke.

32:15.26

Delphina

Hmm.

32:17.38

Bob

Like it's one of those things where you know, this is not a universal rule, but typically ah comedic ah works will be drawn in a simpler, less photorealistic, less beautiful type of style because beauty isn't typically all that funny.

32:36.59

Bob

um And, you know, there are ways, you know, I've i've seen some ah exceptions, but know. You know, there's some expectations when it comes to art style where, you know, if you go into a comic and you've got these like beautiful, like, you you know, beautiful compositions, these beautiful landscapes, this like, you know, these lens flares, you know, this dramatic lighting and so on.

33:05.54

Bob

People are going to go into that expecting... not a short form comedy. And obviously, you know, if you have a good punchline for that, go for it. But you know, if, if, if you just happen to draw in that style well, and you're trying to adapt it to a comedy comic, that's probably not gonna be as effective. So it's just something to think about.

33:28.74

Delphina

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we do work in a visual medium and being able to like, yeah, we come into this expectation of like, okay, this is going to be very serious toned. This is going to be um very, I should take it very seriously. And um you can subvert that for sure.

33:45.52

Bob

Mm-hmm.

33:45.54

Delphina

But you you do have to recognize that, yeah,

33:45.66

Bob

Mm-hmm.

33:49.74

Delphina

I think a lot of times ah if you're relying on the writing, you don't need that. And overcomplicating your art can also undermine visual gags, I feel like. You want the contrast if you're showing like actual slapstick humor where silly things are happening and it relies on the body.

34:12.94

Delphina

um What is the word? Body language, yes. um Yeah, if you're relying on body language, you need some very clear silhouettes. And that's where simpler art can kind of shine for you.

34:25.81

Delphina

um Even if you're looking at XKCD, XKCD has a lot of jokes and a lot of humor um with the stick figures because we can clearly see what's going on and they're not detracting from...

34:38.16

Delphina

What is probably more important than the art is the text. So we need a lot of text in a situation like XKCD. um They need a lot of room and they cannot have the art taken away from that.

34:52.76

Delphina

um And then, and again, it comes back to knowing your audience, knowing that your audience is kind of cerebral and like is going to be fine with reading a wall of text because they're, you know, in the science or math sorts of engineering paths.

35:09.80

Delphina

And so they're used to that. They're very literary. And so you can get away with that um versus maybe a crowd that would just want to have a simpler joke and a simpler visual.

35:22.84

Delphina

So um so yeah, that's absolutely something that you can work into um the language of your humor, I guess.

35:25.61

Bob

Yeah.

35:33.69

Bob

Yeah, and the interesting thing about XKCD is that I think because the jokes can be so complex, like that's why the visuals have to be almost even more simple.

35:44.90

Bob

Because it's like you have everything that is not integral to understanding the joke, you have to be able to get across so quickly. um You know, because a lot of comedy does have to do with the immediacy of it. And if your reader has to try to parse what they're looking at, that'll always take away from the joke.

36:06.61

Delphina

Yeah, for sure. It's very interesting to me too. um Just because I'm trying to think of something like, if XKCD had a very illustrative style, like it wouldn't work, right?

36:18.37

Bob

yeah Yeah, I probably not. I mean, like, maybe someone's genius enough to make it work, but I'm not.

36:23.83

Delphina

Yeah. um And I think um what you can do if you do have like kind of a more detailed style, I think that's where um like facial expressions can kind of shine, where you can kind of have a ah beat where somebody makes a face and you can really render that out in like, ah you know, maybe even a more grotesque way or like ah a very exaggerated way.

36:35.74

Bob

Mm-hmm.

36:47.55

Delphina

um That could kind of be fun for a moment. um But you do have to be consistent with that because to your earlier point, it's just like people aren't going to come in expecting that necessarily.

37:01.77

Delphina

ahead.

37:02.37

Bob

Yeah, well, it's funny. So yeah, it's funny because my style does tend to be a little more ah realistic and serious depending on which of my comics you're reading.

37:04.80

Delphina

yeah go ahead

37:14.83

Bob

And when I do get to a funny moment, I dumbed down my style a little bit. And, you know, those panels tend to follow comedy conventions a little more. It's kind of like you know You see it a lot in manga where like people will kind of like to snap into those other like very exaggerated, kind of like not exactly chibi, but like the like these- i don't I don't know if there's a word for that.

37:37.64

Delphina

it's simplified like yeah

37:38.72

Bob

Yeah, it's simplified. Yeah. and and And you have the flexibility is in long form to jump back and forth. And you can actually even do it pretty abruptly. And if you execute it with like good pacing, um it it can be really effective. And that's just a matter of like, you know, read it, reread it, give it to beta readers, see what other people think.

38:02.53

Bob

um Getting that external feedback before you actually publish it is very helpful. Especially if you've got the nice beta readers who will leave their, there like laughter in the notes and stuff. But, um but yeah, and the other thing with long form is that, you know, not every joke that like I write down everything in my notes, like if I come up with something really funny, I write it down because I don't want to forget it

38:13.84

Delphina

Yeah.

38:28.19

Bob

Sometimes I'll go back to it and it's like, oh, this joke just doesn't actually fit in the scene that I wanted to put it in. And that's devastating for me because you can't tell me not to make a joke. It's not fair.

38:39.12

Bob

So I also don't want to ruin the story and I don't want to tell a bad story. So you know, that's where the beautiful and lovely Patreon comes in or, you know, where you just have like, you know, wherever you're putting your little side stuff, you can do a little one-off mini on the side that isn't a part of that other scene and isn't now going to ruin that other scene.

38:50.78

Delphina

Yes.

39:02.55

Bob

And maybe even you can make a little bit of extra money for people who want to see that funny bit. um Or you can like, you know, once you get like five or 10 of them, you put them in a collection and sell it on itch or something like that.

39:14.19

Bob

So yeah, there, there are ways that you can use those one-off jokes. And because jokes are often easier to package, you can kind of take that moment and throw it on social media and get people excited. Like that's how I discovered how the house husband was. I saw so many of these little one-off, you know, jokey scenes from, and I was like, okay, this, this guy's consistently funny. It's like, I, I, I have to read this.

39:42.30

Bob

And so there are things that you can do with a funny little scene, even if it doesn't fit into the main comic, you can find another way to tell that joke.

39:53.69

Delphina

Yeah, that's so smart. And I feel like um recognizing when a joke is not working is going to interrupt the narrative and perhaps being distracting or annoying to the reader is like a skill in and of itself.

40:09.11

Delphina

Because I feel like if you're trying to cram jokes in you can undermine the character relatability process.

40:09.41

Bob

Mm-hmm.

40:16.56

Delphina

for the reader and that' that's just going to disengage the reader. So you need to kind of... ah figure out the pacing, figure out, like, keep the good stuff, like maybe shift the other stuff to the side a side Patreon or a little book or something like that.

40:37.45

Delphina

um To your point, they're great for advertising. I know Phantomarine does a lot of that too, where there's just some silly things that they don't belong in the comic.

40:43.33

Bob

yeah.

40:46.61

Delphina

They shouldn't be in the comic because they're not working with the narrative. um But they have that lizard brain appeal and they're going to work really nicely on social media and get people curious about these characters if they're consistently funny.

40:53.33

Bob

yeah

41:00.46

Delphina

um And I feel like, um yeah, that's that's the thing to do. If you have these jokes in your heart, if you have these these things and you're making this long form comic like um don't throw them out.

41:12.55

Delphina

Yeah. Yeah.

41:16.89

Bob

Yeah, never throw out a good joke. It's such a waste.

41:19.99

Delphina

I know. um and But the thing is, too, like if you're asking for beta reader help, sometimes I feel like um if they're your friends, they might tell you something is funny when something isn't or they won't be able to troubleshoot like necessarily like...

41:30.78

Bob

Oh.

41:34.97

Delphina

Why isn't this joke working? Like it's complex. Like we can talk about this for hours. We've been talking about this for, for a while. And sometimes it's, it's hard to diagnose, I guess, why a joke isn't funny.

41:46.42

Bob

Yeah.

41:48.49

Delphina

um So yeah I'm not sure what to do about that. You got to practice, you got to get some candid reader interactions and just kind of watch for people's reactions.

42:01.74

Delphina

Sometimes I feel like.

42:03.36

Bob

Yeah, a lot of comedy is being brave enough to get the feedback from people you don't know and being willing to have people say, like, i don't get it.

42:14.39

Bob

um Like one of my one of my most popular ah mini comics on Tumblr right now, it's just started going around again. It's about rock climbing. And like, there's like a million, like not a million, it's not a million, it's 30,000. But it's like, there's like a lot of tags of people just like,

42:33.71

Bob

like typing their laughter hysterically in the tags. And then there's also like the most visible comment comment the most visible comment on it is someone like, wait, what's going on? I don't get it.

42:46.57

Bob

And so like, even with a successful joke, you're gonna have people who don't get it. And, you know, seeing like, one of the things I actually love about Tumblr is that you do see that interaction in the tags because tags are like what they don't really expect the creator to be reading or at least, you know, it's a little bit more low key than actually commenting on something.

43:08.76

Bob

So you kind of get, yeah, like a more direct and honest, like, oh, OK, this is what was really going through their mind.

43:09.33

Delphina

Yes.

43:16.21

Bob

And um like there's one comic I had blow up where it was about melting butter. And like, you know, most people it was is kind of like a surreal horror comedy comic and so like most of the people were responding to that and then you get some people who are like like why are you melting an entire stick of butter and i'm like okay fine you've never made brownies before i get it it's fine but like but you know there's there's gonna be some people who don't like you know connect to the actual point of the joke and that's all right it's it's like as long as enough people as long as you're getting the sense that

43:54.77

Bob

the joke is landing among the people it's supposed to land with, you shouldn't take a few outliers as a sign that the joke isn't landing because there will always be some people who don't get it.

44:06.26

Bob

But if you're mostly getting like the I don't get it or if the post just doesn't go anywhere because no one's interacting with it, you know, that could be because people just didn't see it. That could be, you know, for and for numerous reasons. It could also be because people didn't like to get the joke.

44:25.60

Bob

So that's where you have to actually take it out to someone and be like, hey, do you get this? And it's really awkward to have to ask that sort of thing. But if you are trying to workshop a joke,

44:38.03

Bob

then it's just like any other sort of beta reading and any or other sort of critique. um And, you know, jokes can sometimes feel a little more personal, but, you know, just, ah it's just one of those things you gotta, gotta get the thick skin for.

44:55.83

Delphina

Yeah, it's one of those things.

44:57.95

Bob

up

44:58.35

Delphina

Yep. I'm going to hit pause.

45:02.54

Bob

Yeah, and on the subject of like, if your post just didn't get seen by anyone, and maybe that's the reason why it's not getting traction. ah Another thing you want to consider is like, what, what platform are you posting it on? And is it like an algorithmic platform? Because I mentioned that I do a lot of my humor posting on Tumblr, where I also post my long form webcomic.

45:24.18

Bob

And because of the way Tumblr works, my readers for the most part will still see, you know, both types of my posts. But if you're on something like Instagram on your, ah if you're on something that's more algorithmic, that's more making the decisions about what your followers see and don't see, chances are, if you're, if you're combining different types of content, like, you know, you're doing your art, but you're also posting your cat pics and everyone just loves your cat so much.

45:54.20

Bob

Well, the, but the algorithm is gonna think that your successful posts are the cat posts, and then they're gonna punish your other stuff. So it's a little tricky if you're balancing and combining you know multiple types of things, and you just have to know which platforms you can do that on.

46:12.50

Bob

ah And just keep that in mind as another example of like, well, why didn't this little bit land? I mean, maybe it's just, maybe the algorithm is making it go to the wrong audience.

46:24.58

Delphina

Yeah, for sure. And like, there's so many things that we could talk about that we have talked about, about our algorithms and like what they do and not to let the numbers get to you sometimes.

46:31.07

Bob

yeah

46:38.06

Delphina

But just um absolutely in terms of comedy, too, because that virality has the potential to happen on um on comedic posts like that's something that you need to to take into consideration as well but um yeah so think we're just about good on time so um i'm gonna wrap this up because yeah i think we've talked about a lot of fun comedy stuff um

46:56.03

Bob

Exactly.

47:11.44

Bob

We've had some sensible chuckles.

47:13.58

Delphina

Sensible chuckles, um some good surprises and stuff.

47:13.62

Bob

Yeah.

47:17.62

Delphina

And um and yeah, it can get very scientific. Like you think comedy is easy because it's lighthearted and stuff, um but it can be um a little bit of a nut to crack.

47:31.10

Delphina

So you gotta um you got to work on it and workshop and get feedback.

47:31.56

Bob

yeah

47:37.13

Delphina

And like anything else, it's a skill that you can build. um So with that, I have been Delphina. You can find my webcomic, Sambulis, at Sambulis.com.

47:51.73

Bob

And I have been Bob and you can find my web comics at into the smoke comic.com and demon of the underground.com.

48:00.35

Delphina

Woo! Okay. Thank you so much. Go be funny! Now!

48:03.84

Bob

Now do it. You have to.

48:05.29

Delphina

Oh! You must! All right. Stop.