For Hilarious Punchlines In Your Webcomic, Just Know Your Characters

Well, at the time of writing this article, I’m busy making another webcomic mini series that should be posted here a few days before Christmas. I So, for today, I thought that I’d talk very briefly about how to come up with hilarious punchlines for the jokes in your webcomics.

In short, if you know your characters well enough – and your characters are strange enough- then thinking of amusing punchlines can be surprisingly easy.

To give you an example, one of the comics in my upcoming Christmas mini series is a parody of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”. Of course, this is about the most clichéd thing that you can include in a Christmas-themed comic. It had the potential to turn into a very boring webcomic update.

However, as soon as I realised that one of my characters would actually get along really well with the ghost of Christmas Past (or something slightly similar, but different…), the comic quickly went in a much funnier and slightly more inventive direction.

One of the most basic comedy techniques is to set up an expectation and then subvert it in an unusual way. Having a very good knowledge of your characters’ personalities can help you to work out which situations they will react to in an “unusual” way.

From that, you can than work backwards and come up with a “normal”-looking set up for your joke – that you know that your character will react to in an amusing and unpredictable way.

Many brilliant examples of this comedic technique can be found in a traditional newspaper comic called “Alex” by Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor. The titular character in this comic is a greedy and unprincipled businessman, who will unfailingly react to all situations in a way that serves his purposes.

Of course, this technique is used countless times in many amusing ways by putting Alex in situations where it seems like he’s making a principled stand, giving wise advice or seemingly doing something good … only for it to be revealed that he has an ulterior motive of some kind.

So, if you know your characters well, then finding punchlines for the jokes in your webcomic won’t be too difficult – for the simple reason that you’ll be able to come up with set-ups for your jokes that allow you to come up with great punchlines really easily.

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Sorry for the ridiculously short article, but I hope it was useful 🙂

Thinking Of Your Webcomic Like A Sitcom

Well, since I was busy making a short webcomic series at the time of writing, I thought that I’d talk briefly about one interesting way of looking at webcomics.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but one thing that I’ve noticed about writing short self-contained 3-6 panel webcomic updates is that they’re a lot like the scenes from a sitcom. Although an episode of a sitcom tells a continuous story, many sitcoms can be broken down into lots of shorter funny moments.

This is why clips from sitcoms are so popular on sites like Youtube and why you sometimes even see DVD compilations of clips from classic sitcoms being sold (in the UK, a few years ago, at least). Their structure often allows them to be broken down into lots of smaller self-contained jokes.

The best way to think of a webcomic update (if you’re making self-contained updates) is like one of these scenes from a sitcom. You’ll only usually have room for one joke and, therefore, it can often be a good idea to look to sitcoms for inspiration when it comes to learning how to write these kinds of comic updates.

“Damania Resurgence – Film Night” By C. A. Brown

To give you an example from the comic I made a couple of hours before writing this article, the style of humour in the comic above is similar to the “cut away” jokes that are sometimes found in American sitcoms like “30 Rock”, “Family Guy” etc…

These are jokes where the background etc.. changes significantly in a couple of the panels and yet everything goes completely back to normal a few seconds later. When done well, they’re absolutely hilarious.

Whilst you obviously shouldn’t copy any specific jokes from sitcoms, it can be a good idea to learn things like the structure of a joke and how to set up a joke quickly (by watching sitcoms) if you’re making self-contained webcomic updates. Since, as I mentioned before, webcomics aren’t really that different from sitcoms in some ways.

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Sorry for the ridiculously short article, but I hope it was useful 🙂