Cartoons, Humor, and Music
I've done some research on the correlations between humor and music over the last couple of years, and was kind of eager to try to apply these techniques in an actual collaborative work. Wittigenstein loved sarcastic humor (loved to read detective novels where everyone was a smart-ass) because of its self-subversion of language, and I think that in a lot of ways his ideas can be used to explain concepts of humor, irony, and satire. Humor points out the absurdities that exist in life but at the same time forces the audience to think beyond what's being said and into the context of the situation -- largely why shows like the Daily Show and Colbert Report have faired well in recent years.

I asked Mr. Wheeler about the possibility of doing something like this, and gave him some ideas I had between the correlations between cartooning and music. He gave me a strip to work with that he thought would work with what I was thinking. The original material is displayed on the top left. (Click on image for a larger size.)

Musically speaking there are two different themes, represented by the characters displayed in the strip. The man with the big hands (who's supposed to represent a certain country's "heavy handed" behavior) has the A theme, which is mostly chormatic and dissonant in nature. The B theme, represented by Too Much Coffee Man, has a much more distinct and audible theme, as it tries to, I guess, "explain" himself throughout the comic. They interact in different ways according to the context of the panel. Durations were assigned according to the size of the panel, so larger panels were given a longer amount of time in the music, as shown in the second picture.

In the end there's a sort of resolution, but sort of an ironic one...something that all good humor tends to contain. I tried of follow the satirical and sometimes dark humor that Mr. Wheeler is very good at portraying in his work.

P.S. Oh, almost forgot about this.

Ryan Tanaka - 05/2005