The Funnies Faultfinder

I don't talk about newspaper comics much (or at all, actually) on here, because we already have the fine Comics Curmudgeon to take care of that, and I wouldn't want to step on his toes. However, when I have occasion to read the comics, there is one that, time and time again, perplexes me by its mere presence, and that is the comic known as Brevity.

I know that there has been a single-panel hole in the comics page since Gary Larson retired, and many comics have come along to fill that space (such as Close to Home, which is ugly and rarely funny, but a subject for another time), but that doesn't mean that just anybody who can fit a "joke" into a rectangular panel is the heir to Far Side legacy.

Witness today's comic, which I am reproducing below for the purpose of review and discussion, so please nobody sue me:


This is the comic which is running in papers which carry Brevity today. This is the comic that middle America read this morning with their cups of coffee and their doughnuts.

I ask you:

What the fuck is happening in this comic?

I get that there's a snake, and there's a ladder, and I assume that there is a "Snakes and Ladders" reference going on here, but I honestly don't know how. The snake crawls up the ladder, than slides down it, somehow, going, "Weeeeee!!" Really? That's your joke for today, Brevity? I appreciate absurd humor just as much as the next guy, but there still needs to be a joke there. You can't just draw a snake sliding down a ladder and say to yourself, "Yep, Snakes n' Ladders, that there's a keeper!" then just whisk it off the the syndicate with a feeling of job accomplished. A reference with no joke attached is just a comics version of Epic Movie.

Here's another one, which somebody thought was so hilarious that it should be the cover of the new Brevity book:


Haha, get it? It's an escape key, and it escaped! And the return key is returning! Oh, man, this opens up a whole barrel of questions! Does the control key control something? Does the alt key alter things? Wow, the humor possibilities are endless! Once again, I submit to you that there is no joke in this panel. There rarely is with this comic. I could give you example after example, but the truth is: the comics page sucks enough nowadays. We don't need this sinkhole of humor making things even worse.

I don't think people realize how great we had it a couple decades ago, when Bloom County, The Far Side, and Calvin & Hobbes were all publishing. It was a glorious time for newspaper comics. We're in a sad state now, people, when Brevity publishes four books, and with the sorry state of newspapers in general, I don't know how it'll get any better. Those guys aren't coming out of retirement, and I don't think we can force Darby Conley to draw 'em all.