Funniest Joke That, Like, Ten People Will Get
In this week's Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four #9, the issue ends with the Fantastic Four answering mail from viewers/readers. One question is "Jim O., in Ann Arbor writes, 'Why don't you kick Reed out of the group? All he does is stretch, and that's lame.'"
The other three members defend Reed, including Sue referincing a bust of Abraham Lincoln, saying, "Remember our 15th president? Abraham Lincoln was tall and skinny like Reed, but um...no one thinks he was lame!"
I thought that that was a hilarious joke by Jeff Parker, although you have to wonder how many people will have any idea what he is referring to.
Greg thinks that most comic fans would get the joke (I knew Greg would be one of the folks to get the joke). So let's do an experiment. Comment here if you get the joke.
The other three members defend Reed, including Sue referincing a bust of Abraham Lincoln, saying, "Remember our 15th president? Abraham Lincoln was tall and skinny like Reed, but um...no one thinks he was lame!"
I thought that that was a hilarious joke by Jeff Parker, although you have to wonder how many people will have any idea what he is referring to.
Greg thinks that most comic fans would get the joke (I knew Greg would be one of the folks to get the joke). So let's do an experiment. Comment here if you get the joke.
posted by Brian Cronin at 2/08/2006 08:02:00 PM
40 Comments:
I would think most people would, because most people who read the issue are going to be comic book geeks. But that's just what I think.
Interesting, Greg.
Let's ask!
I dunno about the joke, but Abe Lincoln was the 16th President, not the 15th.
I don't really know if I get it or not. Make sure you tell us why it is supposed to be funny.
I only get this joke because I recently bought the 40 Years of FF DVD. Otherise I'd be clueless. Let's just say the joke hearkens back to eeeeaaaarly Lee/Kirby FF.
I got both jokes, the misnumbering and the comics one.
Oh, you want proof? "If we did a comic book about Abraham Lincoln, you'd probably complain about him being stretchy and lame, too"
And his mother dressed him funny, too.
Aw, great, now I'm back to my old crusty self.
It's a John Wilkes Booth reference.
Sic semper lame and stretchy!
Right?
"I don't really know if I get it or not. Make sure you tell us why it is supposed to be funny."
It's a parody of an old issue of FF, so, basically, to get the joke, you'd have to have read that issue of FF.
I thought I got it ("Jim O." calling someone else stretchy and lame), but now that Brian explained it, I'm not sure. I certainly haven't read that FF issue, and I don't really get the misnumbering either.
Please tell us which issue. I have the 40 years cd and I haven't read some of the early letters pages because I have the stories in the essentials.
In one of the issues before Invisible Girl gets forecfield powers, the FF are in the Baxter Building reading fan letters when one of the fan letters calls Sue useless. Upon reading the letter, Sue gets upset and starts crying. The other members basically break the 4th wall and explain why Sue actually is useful. Later on in the run she gets the forcefield powers and becomes genuinely useful.
It's from issue #11, part of an actual story, not the letters pages. One of the seemingly rare early issues of FF that did not have Namor or Dr. Doom in it.
Dag, I thought it was just a Civil War reference. (That is, though he was the official leader, almost half of the country found this person lame.)
Darn over-reading!
"In one of the issues before Invisible Girl gets forecfield powers, the FF are in the Baxter Building reading fan letters when one of the fan letters calls Sue useless. Upon reading the letter, Sue gets upset and starts crying. The other members basically break the 4th wall and explain why Sue actually is useful. Later on in the run she gets the forcefield powers and becomes genuinely useful."
That, in and of itself, would be funny (that the FF had to defend Sue against their own readers!!), but what puts it over the top, humor-wise, is the Abraham Lincoln factor.
Part of the defense of Sue involves Abraham Lincoln. You simply must get ahold of #11 (or a reprint) to see how Lincoln factors in. Terribly humorous (and I know Parker was thinking the same thing, hence the inclusion of Lincoln in the issue).
It's a parody of an old issue of FF, so, basically, to get the joke, you'd have to have read that issue of FF.
There's really way too much of this crap in comics these days. Not too bad in a letter column, I guess, but the constant cannibalization of older stories that only aging fanboys will get is really insular and hackish.
"There's really way too much of this crap in comics these days. Not too bad in a letter column, I guess, but the constant cannibalization of older stories that only aging fanboys will get is really insular and hackish."
Agreed, and it's even stranger that the joke happens in an issue of a series that's supposed to be a clean slate for younger readers. Ultimate X-Men fell into the same rut with Vaughn, where it started becoming a series of in-jokes for longtime readers of the regular X-Men instead of the clean slate version it was originally intended to be.
In this case, though, I think the joke kind of works even without prior knowledge of FF #11, so I think it's forgiveable in this case, as long as such things don't become a regular part of the book.
The funny thing is, Ben gets so upset that he turns back into the Thing! So Sue's whining made him a monster again.
And the fact that they have a bust of Abe Lincoln in their headquarters is pretty funny, too.
Everyone who didn't get the joke, you could have avoided that lack if you had only listened to me.
Very likely, chasdom.
And click on Greg's link to see me bring up the Abraham Lincoln reference and see our pal Tynne describe the scene, including the Lincoln reference!!
"In this case, though, I think the joke kind of works even without prior knowledge of FF #11, so I think it's forgiveable in this case, as long as such things don't become a regular part of the book."
Agreed.
Although, if the jokes continue working on their own, I don't have much of a problem with it continuing.
I mean, if the jokes work on the main level, does it matter that they also work on a level that only older comic fans will get?
You don't have to be an aging fanboy to read the Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four, just like you don't have to be in your fifties to listen to the Beatles. The classics endure.
I LOLed at it.
"You don't have to be an aging fanboy to read the Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four, just like you don't have to be in your fifties to listen to the Beatles. The classics endure."
You are absolutely correct. I made a mistake.
I meant to say, of course, "fans of older comics" not "older comic fans."
"Agreed.
Although, if the jokes continue working on their own, I don't have much of a problem with it continuing."
When I say I don't want them to become a regular thing, I mean as in every other page. I'd like to see a decent amount of space dedicated to original gags too. If they appear regularly but keep working on their own and don't get overdone, I'd like that.
Fair enough.
For the record, you can add me to the list of people who got it (I've got both the Essential FFs, and the 40 Years DVD).
I got the joke. FF #10, right?
-- Anun
Actually I've been meaning to buy up the Lee/Kirby run, but I'm not sure the best way to do this. The DVD sounds great, but a lame way to read comics. I like the essentials, but I want color. I'm taking it the hardcover color comics are reallye xpensive? What's the best way to do this?
Anything that invokes the "Lincoln's Mother" defense from "A Visit With The Fantastic Four" is comedy -gold-.
I bought the issue just because of that gag. :D
It's even funnier if you caught the first parody of the original Lincoln defense" of Sue that was either in "Not Brand Ecch" or a fanzine that Grass Green did in the sixties (no I can't remember which is was, it was almost forty years ago, what'd'ya want!).
I saw:
Jim O. + Ann Arbor + bad attitude
and immediately went to
= Jim Osterberg
This is almost as good as a Dan Slott comic, wherein one doesn't have to be a geek to get the full joke...but if one is, it's nigh perfect.
The Aristocrats!
"I thought this was really funny (although probably only because it reminds me of that Lee/Kirby issue). So, blow it out your ass, grumpy."
Well, the fact that you had to read a forty-year-old comic to get that joke - in a comic that's ostensibly designed to suck in new, younger readers - makes that joke, by its nature, insular and cannibalistic and appealing mostly to a shrinking fanbase of already-dedicated readers. So thank you for proving my point.
The increasing tendency of the major publishers to try to squeeze more money out of the same shrinking circle of readers (instead of trying to expand that circle with more approachable, accessible comics) has the American comic book industry locked in a slow death spiral. There are other factors contributing to this, too, not the least of which is the maddening system which funnels comics almost exclusively to specialty shops where casual shoppers miss them entirely (and fuels the demand for insular comic book writing). Nevertheless, I find it odd to periodically read posts on comic blogs bemoaning "The State Of The Industry" scattered among posts celebrating the in-joke-within-an-in-joke method of Big Two humor or the byzantine plot of Infinite Crisis.
Did you read the disclaimers in Brian's original post that most people probably won't get the joke?
This was hardly a celebration of exclusive jokes.
It was pointing out that the joke -is- an exclusive one.
Claiming it's a symbol of "what's WRONG with comics" though? That's going too far.
It's an exclusive joke that took up all of three or four panels.
That's really -not- a big deal.
Yes, I also think that any "jokes" that get made in a comic must be correct jokes that support my political ideas of what comics should contain in order to push forward into the new millenium. Any writer who would make such an unsupportable use of paper and ink is clearly an insular hack, and since our glorious society cannot tolerate hacks, he needs resocialization.
kenchen writes: " I like the essentials, but I want color."
I'd like color, too, but even more I'd like marginally better paper. Those things look like they'd turn yellow and start disintegrating during the time it takes for a single reading.
"Yes, I also think that any "jokes" that get made in a comic must be correct jokes that support my political ideas of what comics should contain in order to push forward into the new millenium. ... he needs resocialization."
I thrill to the sound of your misplaced indignation, but I was not and am not calling for a comic book jihad. All I said was that one particular joke in a letter column wasn't that bad, but it was an example of a phenomenon which had gotten out of hand. And somebody told me to "blow it out my ass" because I didn't read FF#11 to get the Abe Lincoln joke. Whatever.
In a medium which is overwhelmed by insularity - by references to references, by cross-company crossovers, by aged and tired characters revamped beyond the point of workability, by the recycling of stagnant plotline after stagnant plotline, where every dangling plot thread from Alexander Luthor to the Third Summers Brother must be rehashed because there are enough hangers-on who were reading fifteen or twenty or thirty years ago that they'll pick up the latest lukewarm plot-mush just to get a nostalgic thrill from seeing it all trotted out again - I would like some genuine attempt to make some not-insignificant portion of comicdom accessible to new readers - not just the ghetto of Kids' Comics, or a handful of Ultimate or All-Star books, but even, say, 20% of the Big Two's output. One out of five. That's not even that much, but it's a hell of a lot more than either of them is putting out right now. If nothing else it would force these companies to do something new for a change instead of eternally reliving their glory days.
I think I've yet to ever disagree with Iron Lungfish. On anything. Scary.
Okay...Iron Lungish, I have yet to see -anyone- comment yet that they think insular comments are good things.
You said in your first post that this isn't really that bad an example of what you're talking about, given that it's a throwaway gag in a comics-style lettercol.
That's why people got miffed: Using something as minor and harmless as this as a cue to start pontificating on how it's a symbol of the EVIL of modern super-hero comics...well, you could have picked many better examples.
Right battle, wrong field.
A homage to a very early Fantastic Four story where the Fantastic Four dealt with a letter that belittled the Invisible Girl.
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