Before and After

I really enjoy the artwork and comics of Charles Addams and Edward Gorey. One of my favorite books by Edward Gorey is the ABC book: "The Gashlycrumb Tinies". In which which different children meet with disaster, or even an untimely demise. I love children - I have three children and two grandchildren - so, I can't explain why I think those are funny. I guess it is like slapstick humor - even though someone is getting hurt, there is something funny about the way it is presented and it is nothing like reality. If it seemed the least bit real, I wouldn't be amused by it. It is the extreme contrast from reality that makes it so funny - like the movers who struggle to get the beautiful grand piano up the long stair case and at the last minute drop it down to the sidewalk, smashing in a thousand pieces.

Other then when I was a teenager, I've not done much macabre humor. However, several years ago after seeing before and after weight loss pictures, I was amused by the idea of extreme before and after pictures. I was also amused by the idea of unusually shaped heads with matching skulls. The sketches posted here are the simple doodles that came out of those musings.

Parsley Lovers Do Exist

After the party . . .

Comic Gone Awry

What does an artist do after he spends a couple of hours putting a drawing together and then discovers that he goofed up? In this case, the cartoonist (Vee Mack) used the mistake as the focus of the comic. However, the mistake was only obvious to the artist. So the enigmatic tension that he created - while amusing to him - was lost to most everyone else who saw it. What is the mistake? If you sit down in a chair with your back straight and your elbows up against your waist, your hands can't possibly extend over your knees, unless you are a gibbon! Therefore, the oddity in the drawing was used to indicate to the viewer that the seated figure was so humiliated by his long arms that he was unwilling to speak to anyone and so retired to the attic in silence.

Vee Mack, (who retired from drawing comics before more than only a very few were published), delighted in drawing the comic first and then afterwards deciding what the caption would be. In this case he fell short of the mark. As we know: a joke is not funny, if you have to explain it. However, Mack persisted in the idea that the artwork of the comic ought to take precedence over the caption/punchline. If the graphic itself was intriguing and amusing; it did not matter to Mack whether or not the caption was amusing. I suppose this is sort of a silent movie approach to drawing comics. Have any comics been able to survive using this philosophy?