Tears of laughter

what makes you happy?

I don’t consider myself funny. I sometimes try to sound funny, smart-funny, you know? And more often than not, it doesn’t work. I get confused in the tone of the thing, I don’t get the beats quite right. I function in “drama mode”, and the beats and long moments of silence work in completely different ways than in comedy.

The stories I like to tell revolve around relationships, about existing in a world in relation to others around you, and how we affect each other, and what we feel around each other. Most of the time, this interest of mine manifests in dramatic stories, and many of this dramatic stories can get quite sad. This part of me likes “sad”. Things go wrong. We make mistakes, Hearts get broken. People get hurt. Often in life, this is how we learn and how we grow. Still…

I have been noticing how much I have been pleasantly surprised how emotional I get when, instead of watching dramas, I watch comedies. I don’t think I like comedies better, I still think most of them are silly, and shallow, but maybe there’s something about bringing people laughter that makes them lower their defenses just long enough for you to get them deep. The comedies that can do that amaze me to no end.

Fleabag was a series that caught me off guard when I just I was just watching a story that was intended to make me laugh. More recently, Ted Lasso won me over so much that I have recommended the series to everyone. And then came Taika.

Taika Waititi wants you to feel things, and see things, and learn things, and fully believes there’s always a funny way to help you along your journey. His latest efforts in serialized fiction, Reservation Dogs and Our Flag Means Death, make you laugh nervously, giggle like e teenager, and this unexpected warmth takes over you. Quicker than you realize, you care about these characters, you relate to them, and as you laugh with them, they become your friends. I think that when you become friends with imaginary characters in the stories you watch or read, you open your sensibility to appreciate and care more for your real friends. You start to notice the friends who look at you like Stede Bonnet looks at Blackbeard, or you notice when you friends give you sage advices like the Spirit Warrior who appears for Bear.

(I know both these show aren’t completely created and made by Taika, and that movies and tv series, much more than comics, are a collective effort, but I believe that Taika got involved with these projects because it had this potential to do what he does best, and his involvement made it possible for these shows to get made, and the people involved share this sensibility in his work that I like so much).

When I read Last Man, by Balak, Michaël Santaville and Vivès, it was the humor that won me over. I laughed out loud while reading that comic. The action, the dynamic fights and the art only complemented the laughter and the heart of that story.

I just finished reading Ping Pong, by Taiyo Matsumoto, and it’s such an unique comic. It has humor, it treats the action of a Ping Pong tournament as if it’s an intergalactic starfighters’ battle, and it has the right amount of teenage drama to keep every reader wanting to know what happens next, and who will win the championship.

Humor is fast and agile, and because of that it works best in comic strips than comic books, and fast and loose drawing styles instead of elaborate and detailed drawings. Every time Ping Pong or Last Man are funny, the drawing looks like a thousand miles an hour. It has to look fast, read fast and grab the reader fast, otherwise it does not land. Every Bendis joke would read funnier if he had someone who could draw like Bill Watterson to draw it.

Calvin and Hobbes was phenomenal. It had all the characteristics of an agile, funny strip, and the drawing was fast, expressive and elegant, but when Watterson caught us off guard, he would surprise us with an amazingly crafted Sunday strip, with Dinosaurs in forests or alien worlds from across the galaxy.

Maybe this is where I’m trying to get at. How to make the audience lower their defenses, open up to what we’re trying to say, and how to ignite inside each one of you out there an honest, heartfelt (and sometimes funny) emotional reaction.

Be safe. Be kind. Be curious.
Pa-ZOW!

Fábio Moon
Moon Base, São Paulo
April 11th, 2022