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Gag Comics

YOLO


19 comments on “YOLO”

>Two dudes casually meeting
>Feels obligated to show off a tattoo to his friend
>Shoots the fucker on the spot because of criticism, apparently murder isn’t a problem where they’re at.
>Dude casually notices magic horse giving birth, and apparently it’s not crazy where they’re at.

No. Seriously? Where is this at?

My bigger problem with this, to be a negative Nancy for a second, is mostly just the dialogue. The “joke” is mad forced and generally the discourse demands a high threshold of suspending one’s disbelief. A threshold I assumed didn’t even exist for comedy… Until now.

They can’t all be winners… I guess?

As someone who has been on Toonhole since 2012, you get to a point where just like life itself, the painful unpredictability of it all becomes numbing beyond tolerable acceptance and even just take the good with the bad, (meaning I’m just fortunate to have strips I call my favourites, such as this one http://toonhole.com/comic/fist-bump/) otherwise I myself would be trying to write jokes that lack plotholes and are always inspired.

Actually, I HAVE, and look at how many people have heard of me compared to Toonhole. -.-

They’re on a farm/inner city outreach programme, near the stables.
The sound of the gunshot sent the pregnant horse into premature labour.
Ryan used the neutral light green as a background colour because putting in an actual background would detract from the narrative.

Do you require an explanation as to why only the ginger foal has a nose as well? If so, try using your imagination and suspending your disbelief. It works for the rest of us.

My main problem isn’t the concept, or the art, it’s the way it’s framed and the way it flows.

Mainly, my “inorganic” sensor was hardcore tripped by the second panel’s dialogue. Yeah, the character’s a nerdy sort, clearly, but dumping a HUGE line with all that specificity slams the breaks right as the joke is just getting out of the driveway. That just doesn’t feel like anything anyone would EVER say in that context, but nor is it so slightly removed as to seem like a humorous bit of idea tossing that could be poking fun at the idea of YOLO as a slang term and concept.

Quite frankly, if you read web comics, it’s a 100% dead giveaway something with literal, will-be witnessed reincarnation is going to go down in the next 2 panels… And then it is. Lots of webcomics based on humor are predictable, sure, but when you toss in the hamfisting and self-spoiler nature of the dialogue, it leaves the whole strip’s punchline exposed from a mile away, and that INSTANTLY beats in the feeling of lost potential or poor execution. A real shame, because the art’s fantastic and the concept CAN be funny, it just isn’t how it’s framed here.

There’s two distinct directions this comic wants to go, but it pussyfoots around with both, so I’ll humor breaking them into their own concentrated versions, and I’ll write them as follows.

Situation A: Instead of “But what if hinduism is right and we’re reincarnated into new life forms each time we die”, the character just says “But what if reincarnation is real?”, or something similar. You should know what reincarnation is, in concept, it’s extremely commonplace knowledge. Beating the audience over the head with a question that is simultaneously combined with a definition is just long-winded, and it sets the bar for expected intelligence pretty low. Toss in some bonus points for rewriting the nerdy guy as a stoner who suggests the same thing, but preceded with “Nah man,”. You see, you might actually expect a statement like that from a stereotypical stoner ideology, and the stoner guy seems more like an archetype you’d find YOLO tattoo guy hanging out with. Extra bonus points for changing the horse to a dog, or a cat, or any damned animal that’d make sense to be in proximity of a guy with a YOLO tattoo, backwards hat, and piercings. A horse is not one of them, especially when he’s shooting someone in broad daylight, because that shit instantly bleeds “deep metropolitan area”.

Situation B: There’s two country-looking types or “all american”, maybe white trash-esque characters. One of them has a hat saying YOLO, and he’s talking to a friend about his sweet new merch. Friend jokingly suggests some bit about “what if we reincarnate like them curry eaters think” (or some other reference to hinduism done through a stereotypically expected “ignorance lens”, with a reference to reincarnation). You expect them both to laugh and write off the idea without putting any real thought into it, but because absurdity, YOLO guy shoots his friend on the spot with a sawed off, or maybe a revolver or some other also-anticipated weapon, retaining the matching theme. YOLO guy shrugs off the shooting, but notes something in the distance… It’s a horse giving birth, and his friend pops out in horse form, as we have here. Maybe the newborn horse attacks YOLO guy because he wants revenge, thus granting karma (boy wouldn’t that be really thematic), or maybe he just calls BS or says “I told you so”… Either way, the horse actually makes sense in this context, and the dialogue is at least a dash stealthier.

I love it.

It reminds me of Looney Tunes, for example, but especially some Pogo gags.

There’s one in particular, when something goes off with a bang (I forget what), and the hedgehog, who was fishing & hadn’t been part of the story up to that point, jumps up with a serious look on his face whilst shouting something along the lines of “They found me! They’ll never take me alive!”

I guess you can call it nonsensical humour. It’s actually harder than you’d think, as most people will just end up doing “random” space ninja pirate raptor jesus bullshit (or at best, a Family Guy non-sequitur) whereas a good nonsense joke like this one will, despite all the randomness, will follow through until the end, with the punchline being related to the beginning of the joke.

Even Monty Python couldn’t do it consistently. Most of their sketches would just end abruptly, because by that point in the joke, they couldn’t figure out a proper punchline any more.

10/10 comic, good work, Ryan.

I never though that I would say this, but I just learnt something about how horses give birth, all thanks to this non-PC cartoon. Thanks Toonhole!

No. Think about how they have sex. The stallion isn’t bumming the mare. The vagina is located a lot closer to the anus in quadrupeds, than in bipeds.

And, at least they’ve got anuses and vaginas, and not cloacas, like birds, reptiles and fish!

To be fair, he is a ginger, so he doesn’t actually have a soul to begin with. He probably being punished instead of reborn.

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