Johnny America

 

Re­view: Re­al Life Ad­ven­tures com­ic from the May 24th New York Post

by

To my mind, this com­ic has one of the more bor­ing names on the Comics and Games page. How could Re­al Life Ad­ven­tures pos­si­bly com­pare to “La Cu­caracha” or “Bal­do”? Still, af­ter sev­er­al weeks of pe­rus­ing the comics pro­vid­ed in the NY Post and the Dai­ly News, I have come to the con­clu­sion that they are de­cid­ed­ly less fun­ny than re­al life. And: “Ad­ven­tures.” Al­ways good. So maybe there is some promise af­ter all.

This strip is com­posed by two gen­tle­men, Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich. Gary and Lance would have you be­lieve they’re just reg­u­lar guys, ob­serv­ing the hi­lar­i­ty of every­day life. So, let’s see it.

This is a one-pan­el com­ic. The char­ac­ters are a man and a woman with ex­act­ly the same faces, but dif­fer­ent hair. The man has blonde hair and the woman brown, plus he’s a lit­tle beefi­er than her. If you’re still hav­ing trou­ble telling them apart, look for the ear­rings and the pur­ple shirt. These are the ear­marks of femininity.

There are three speech bub­bles fill­ing the top half of the pan­el. They al­ter­nate man-woman-man, thus con­vey­ing a short con­ver­sa­tion. In com­e­dy terms, it goes Set Up-Re­ac­tion-Punch­line. It’s a clas­sic for­mu­la. The joke is as follows:

Man: I’LL BE IN THE STUDY TENDING TO THE AFFAIRS OF THE ESTATE.

Woman: YOU MEAN YOU’LL BE IN THE KITCHEN WRITING BILLS?

Man: WHY IS IT SO HARD TO LET ME LIVE WITH MY ILLUSIONS?

Hi­lar­i­ous. But why is it so fun­ny? Well, first of all, we have a par­o­dy of a man’s self-ag­gran­diz­ing be­hav­ior. A guy like this (for ease, I’ll re­fer to him as “Frank”) does­n’t have a study. He does­n’t even have a den, an of­fice, or a rum­pus room. All he has is a work­bench in the base­ment. You’ll no­tice he has a short sleeve shirt on, and no tie. He’s got a sev­en dol­lar mil­i­tary hair­cut. His wife wears plas­tic ear­rings. Frank is­n’t a wealthy man.

The woman (“Ellen”) on­ly has one line. At first glance it seems in­con­se­quen­tial, but look again. While the gist of it is ob­vi­ous — Frank will be pay­ing bills — what she says is some­thing quite dif­fer­ent: you’ll be in the kitchen writ­ing bills. This kind of sub­tle word­play and change-up is a way of keep­ing the read­er on his or her toes — and aware of the ac­tion in­tend­ed. By us­ing the word “writ­ing” Ellen gives a verb that the read­er can vi­su­al­ize — Lance and Gary have tak­en you out of the pan­el and in­to the fu­ture ac­tions of these char­ac­ters. If Ellen had said “pay­ing” in­stead (which would be nor­mal us­age), the ac­tion would be too abstract.

The body lan­guage of the two char­ac­ters be­trays them fur­ther. Frank is fac­ing away from Ellen and his shoul­ders and slight­ly stooped. He looks like a beat­en man. They both have a pudgy round­ness that im­plies they don’t put any ef­fort in­to main­tain­ing their physiques. Ellen wears a shirt iden­ti­cal (ex­cept in col­or) to Frank’s, which serves to min­i­mize her “fem­i­nine as­sets.” I be­lieve they are both weary of their lives (and each oth­er) but she seems slight­ly more accepting.

Is this Re­al Life? Frank clear­ly wish­es it was not his re­al life. A sear­ing in­dict­ment of Amer­i­can mid­dle class? Un­clear. Is this an Ad­ven­ture? It is not.

Filed under Fiction on May 24th, 2004

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Reader Comments

Faso Latido wrote:

Emi­ly, I have not read the comics in quite a while, but your last two con­tri­bu­tions make me feel as though I have. Plus, your in­sight re­gard­ing the var­i­ous themes and con­cerns that the mod­ern car­toon­ist faces is quite re­mark­able. Keep up the good work. I am yours, etc.

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