GIANT ATTACK MONSTERS MEGA-BATTLE! pg11
IS POOPOO FUNNY? An essay by A. Casserly
Is “poopoo” funny? Well, that all depends. If we’re talking about actual fecal matter, the answer is “no”; there’s nothing funny about seeing it, smelling it, touching it, etc (as anyone who has a pet or a baby will tell you). Despite what many gross-out ‘comedies’ of the late 90’s/early 2000’s repeated endlessly, actual dung is not amusing in the slightest.
But why is the word itself funny? I think it’s because it’s hard-wired into some of our earliest memories. Parents seem far more concerned with whether or not a child is behaving well more than anything else, and one of the big taboos of child behavior was dirty talk. Even if you were acting like a little angel even mentioning something that mom or dad found unpleasant would get you into trouble. This was your earliest experience with authority, but oddly enough, you soon learned the innate thrill of challenging authority. Letting words slip that you knew would irritate a parent, guardian, teacher, or uptight babysitter was riding the razor’s edge between freedom and a time-out (or smack in the head), and your inner child still remembers that thrill, that fun, dare I say, that rebellion. Yes, folks, every challenger of societal norms, especially comedians, begins with “poopoo”.
So I stand before you, a man well into my thirties, to present my hard-work, a comic with a character named Poopoo. Am I ashamed? Not in the slightest! Because I’m walking that tightrope between humor and a spanking, between thrills and sitting-in-the-corner, between revolution and no cookies, all for the sake of a stupid joke! AND I’M GLAD, YA HEAR ME?! GLAD! WAAA HAA HAA HAA HAAAAAAA!
….
Of course, in Zarbonok’s homeworld “Poopoo” is just the name of his family line, likely with no comical aspects whatsoever.
“Screw you guys….. I’m going home…..”
“Talking poo is where I draw the line.”
…hey, Cartman’s reply still kinda’ works here!
It was either Cartman or Urkel…..
“I don’t have to take this….. I’m going home.”
First, happy Easter, hope you’re having fun be it a religious thing or simply a day off.
Second, Zarbonok, my friend….. you haven’t even seen the worst of it. Just turn around and go home, this place ain’t worth the headaches…… it’s like a house that will cost you more than it’s worth to fix up to a livable state!
As for our ever jovial comic artist: Great breakdown of the idea of the poo-joke and its’ origins! I love the design of this villain! Keep it up. Also the dramatic flames in the second last panel are great!
Happy Easter to everyone who enjoys it! If not, well, there will be a lot of candy on sale tomorrow at discount prices, so dig in.
We have yet to learn if Zarbonok has any common sense or not, but so far he’s not off to a good start. Bragging about yourself and your family bloodline just doesn’t have the impact as it did in the days of royal lineage and whatnot (perhaps if he had come to Earth a century or two ago…of course, there weren’t many Interdimensional Telegatewayporters back then).
Glad you enjoy, and more Poopoo is coming!
More Poopoo is coming?
Dude, we told you to lay off the black coffee and breakfast burritos…
As long as you leave eggs and fruit out of the equation you should be able to survive.
Maybe.
Mrrrffttttt! *snicker* *cough* MWAHAHAHAHA! *gasp* *snort* PooPoo? Really? No sh*t?
Hey Dada! What’s brown and sounds like a bell? Dung!
The ‘dung’ joke will forever remind me of the Monty Python sketch about all of the crazy visitors who randomly show up at Graham Chapman’s house. It’s always good for a laugh (just as long as you don’t laugh as hard as Terry Jones’ character…).
You’ve never lived until a major American corporation has terminated your employment status on account of your performing a Monty Python skit about the dead parrot with a John Cleese impression.
Incidentally I’ll never buy a Whirlpool product. To hell with those guys.
Oh, there’s WAAAAY worse behavior in other Python skits. See how long you can keep a job after performing “Cannibal Undertaker” or “Dirty Vicar”.
…not that I’ve ever done that, of course.
“woody”
So we have here an entitled interdimentional prince that is used to his family name getting him street cred. Well here on Earth, we have these things called humans. They are miraculously isolated from the multiverse, amazingly resilient to anything resembling a sense of self preservation, and have a notable tendency to laugh at anything that they see fit for no apparent reason. They laugh at things about to eat them, they laugh at things they are about to eat, they laugh at things they have no actual interest in because they gave it a silly name. The important thing about humans though, they’ll tear apart a predator and use its parts to predate upon things they had no business even being next to. Our ancestors drove mammoths to extinction. we turned wolves into terriers, we turned crab apples trees into Washington reds. Imagine what a determined human can do with a mechanical squid…
That is a damned awesome write-up, equal parts Darwin and Douglas Adams. “We turned wolves into terriers” is brilliant, and is something I’m going to have to quote from now at parties.
Of course there probably ARE a number of uses for mechanical squids, most of which would probably be thought up by the Japanese. I’ll let you all decide for yourself what those are (and if you are Japanese, feel free to share…just without any visual aids).
I must admit now, every time I have ever commented here before tonight I was too drunk to walk straight. I am deserving of nothing approaching either Darwin’s or Adams’ insight and must admit my idol is Sir Pratchett. I am just a nautical dwarf that can’t manage his way to his own hearth because the sea keeps getting in the way. All I know is that humans are the real monsters and that all else is fit to be food for the bold.
Well said, Drathmir! On the other hand though….. lots and lots and lots of people died managing those feats. But when’s that ever stopped humanity? As Jenn once told me: “If it can be killed, then somebody somewhere will probably manage it with nothing but a knife and an attitude.”
Humans have a rich history of eating their predators. We produce warriors that defy our own gods by our very base nature. One might wonder, “why would a peasant boy whose father was a shepherd take up a spear against the gods?” The answer has always been that “The minions of Anubis bathed the boy’s father’s heard in hellfire during the battle against their actual enemies and he now has no recourse but to know hate for all gods”.
This simple principle is why goatherds the world over take up small arms against empires, why soldiers take up arms against overwhelming tides of invaders, why humans will one day stupefy alien generals with the very concept of a Pyrrhic victory. Humans are the very incarnate of the concept of “F*ck you*” to all that should rightly be their authority figures.
In the end, either the natural world will break before us or we will break under the weight of the cosmos. Gods help us if it is both.
Mechanical squids… hah.
I think this was the ‘moral’ of one of my favorite films, The World’s End…which also had lots and lots of drinking!
Scapula vs an empire (or even God) could be an interesting concept, but I’ll save that for another day. In the meantime we still have a mechanical squid to deal with.
mmmm, mechanical calamari….
All right, Mr. Casserly. I don’t get to bring this piece of trivia out very often, but you, sir, have forced my hand. The oldest recorded joke is a fart joke.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-joke-life-idUKL129052420080731
poop jokes are funny simple because they have been around for literally thousands of years. Its hard wired into us to at least get a chuckle out of them. its a humor that last, because we all know of its befouling nature, and we laugh at the misfortune of those who are on its receiving end. a subtle schadenfreude, if you will.
I usually don’t click on links in the comments section (internet safety and all), but I can absolutely believe that scatological humor dates back to before the carriage. I’m not sure when in history it became taboo to talk about poo (probably when “high society” came around, although let’s face it, the royal folks were some of the biggest perverts of all time), but there will always be someone, somewhere, willing to laugh at the thought of it.
…and hey, maybe that’s why “The Miller’s Tale” is the only thing I can remember about Chaucer.
It was just a news post about it. 1900 bc. ancient Sumaria. the joke: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”
As for high class hoity-toity types, look no farther than some of the popes. Little boys popping out of cakes, anyone? The royals were not much better.
A storyline about Scapula in high society might be interesting, but Dave Sim covered that ground decades ago (yep, even the Pope part).
Scapula with a young woman who farted in his close proximity…well, there’s no way I would ever show THAT in this comic! Right, readers?
he could always chill with the likes of Elizabeth Balthory… the homicidal high class…
(Looks left.)
(Looks right.)
Clears throat.)
POOPOO!
(Runs away, giggling)
I’m telling! Teacher! Abel said POOPOO!
Can’t catch me! I’m the fastest kid in the 8th grade!
(Bell rings, ending recess)
God DAMMIT… !
Well, at least it’s not his cousin, The Dreadlord Peepee. That guys a mess!
BaDUMPSCH!
Or is that Ba-DUMP-psch!
I could go on and on but will stop myself. Thanks for the belly laughs!
Dreadlord Peepee was WAAAAAAY too horrifying to be drawn in this comic, or any comic for that matter. Bernie Wrightson was commissioned to draw a comic about him and decided to fake his own death rather than finish the assignment (that’s right, horror-hounds, Bernie walks among us!).
Don’t belly-laugh too hard, or that dump may come out too early!
was that before, or after his eyes temporarily melted into a smoldering heep of goo?
Great coloring… And I, too, am chuckling… Poo Poo… hahah… poo poo… hahahah.
And by the way, thank you for bringing back the silly to your comic… I loves me some silly.