Abstract
This article explores the format and construct of longer humorous comics strips through the close analysis of “Tin-Can Tommy The Clockwork Boy” from D C Thomson’s The Beano Comic, a publication aimed at children and launched in 1938. This study of one specific strip argues that the use a seriality somewhere between open-ended and discontinuous, continual fluctuations between flat and round characterisation and a style wavering between completeness and expressivity constructs an aesthetic of incompleteness which is essentiel in the creation of humour. Following investigation of the ways in which this particular format constructs funniness as a process of continual negotiation, specifically through the use of exaggeration, asymmetry, dissatisfaction and imbalance, the article concludes that a quality of unfinished-ness is integral to the relationship these comics create with their readers, and therefore fundamental to laughter.
Highlights
“Tin-Can Tommy The Clockwork Boy”: A case study in incompleteness for humorous effect in British children’s comics of the 1930s
The humour in “Tin-Can Tommy” strips further broke with the serious picture story format, using exaggeration and slapstick rather than action and adventure
This paper considers how “Tin-Can Tommy” was relevant to the era in which it was published and how exploring the cultural context furthers our understanding of the ways in which humour comics are comic
Summary
Bukatman describes the format of these strips as a “stupefyingly predictable windup” (96) He argues though that the humorous play with time and timing in comics is about playing with bodily action in order to explore the human experience through the prism of laughter: “in the wake of chronophotography, comics developed a more sustained interest in mapping time, measuring the moment-by-moment transitions of a body traveling through or acting within space”, what they were interested in measuring was “the onset of disorder.” (13) This kind of humour as seen in “Tin-Can Tommy’s” eighth panel, is rather about the potential for a body at play, rather than the finality of a gag. The strip was discontinued in 1947, to make way for later evolutions of humour strips, this analysis uses Tin-Can Tommy as a pertinent example to illuminate how humour comics are continually in a process of negotiation and change, incessantly redefining the relationship among format, character, narrative and humour
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