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Beetle Bailey, 10/6/04

I should say right off the bat tonight that the current drug-dealing storyline in Mary Worth attracts me so powerfully that it’s taking every ounce of willpower to not do that strip again today. But I know that you, the readers, deserve more variety, so instead I’m going to take on a very serious issue in the comics community: Overly Contrived Setup Syndrome, or OCSS.

OCSS is a humor malfunction that occurs when the author of a comic comes up with a punchline first, then works backwards to create an scenario to set up that punchline. For all I know, this happens all the time, but I would only offer a diagnosis of OCSS when the creaking of the machinery is painfully obvious. Take this Beetle Bailey, for example. The punchline: Sarge whistling because he accidentally ate a whistle — that’s funny! (It’s actually not, of course, but stay with me.) So, um, why did he eat the whistle? I know, because it fell into the stew! But why would it do that? Why would Lt. Fuzz be leaning over Sarge’s stew for it to fall in? That’s a pretty contrived scenario. You see that events become progressively less probable when you consider them in reverse order — a sure sign of OCSS.

OCSS is a symptom of gag-driven strips. Basically, some strips (I would say the better ones) are character-based, which means that the humor is derived … from … the …

Oh, no, I promised that I wasn’t going to do it.

Let me start again. In a gag-driven strip, everything’s about a particular punchline, which means that … it … doesn’t…

Mary Worth … crystal meth … must … resist … argh …

Oh, hell, I give up. Enjoy!

Mary Worth, 10/6/04

You know what they say — the first piece of gum is free!

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Beetle Bailey, 9/21/04

Oh, man. First Camp Swampy gets all Queer Eyed, and now this. And I think that, despite the bad coloring job in the daily strip above, this is the same guy in both. Now, maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I think that it’s pretty clear that this soldier is gayer than a gay thing that is gay.

It would frankly be great if there were a gay character in a daily comic that isn’t Doonesbury. I’m just worried that Beetle Bailey isn’t the most sensitive venue for such an introduction. I mean, they haven’t been particularly nice in their depiction of computer nerds. Or, you know, Asians.

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Beetle Bailey, 9/4/04

When Doonesbury’s B.D. lost his leg in Iraq and we saw him without his helmet on for the first time in that strip’s history, it had an enormous impact on readers. Seeing Beetle Bailey’s Sarge without his hat on is significantly less intriguing. Still, it’s interesting that the taskmaster drill sergeant, normally presented as Private Bailey’s persecutor, is here fervently praying to never see Beetle again. Maybe it’s like with bears: They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.

Also interesting is the fact that God has laughed in Sarge’s face, presenting him with the exact opposite of his most profound wish, causing him to rage against the arbitrariness of the universe. Here’s a tip, Sarge: if you’re gonna talk to the Almighty, put on some damn pants.