I won’t link to it, but I went to JohnHartStudios.com to complain. They offered a lame apology since they were getting letters, saying they were sorry we readers didn’t find it funny. Douchebags.
Q: How do you make a cat sound like a dog?
A: Douse it with lighter fluid and toss on a match. (“Wooof!”)
Q: How do you make a dog sound like a cat?
A: First you douse the dog with water, then stick him in the
freezer. After a couple of hours take him out and run him
through a bandsaw. (“Reeooww!”)
For the curious, here’s the strip and some reader mail.
Very classy move on their part having the first reader feedback item be one saying “people should just get over themselves.” :dubious:
Post deleted.
Thanks for the link KneadToKnow.
See, this is the whole point. You can still laugh at a joke about setting dogs on fire and find the act itself abhorrent. If the joke is funny, then it’s funny. Comedy should have no constraints. Imagine a world where you can only laugh at those things which are morally irreproachable and of which you heartily approve. You’re imagining a world without comedy.
I thought from seeing “BC Comic” that it was some stand-up artist from Vancouver. Then I realized that although V-town has many, many things to recommend it, a sense of humor is not one of them.
You’re imagining a world where B.C. is funny.
It’s not funny, but I don’t find it offensive or remotely bothersome either.
Agreed. It was just so…blah. I think I’m more offended by the fact that I was hoping for something risque and out there. Perhaps even graphic. I’ve seen more offensive stuff on Family Circus.
Yeah, that’s kind of my feeling. Having something weird and nonsensical is fine for some comics–Get Fuzzy makes hay out of this all the time–but you have to set it up right. Why on earth would Spot hide all the kindling? If Spot had “fetched” all the kindling, it would at least make some sort of sense. But as it is, the story is one of a strangely saboteur dog and his sociopathic owner. Whatever humor is inherent in that concept isn’t really explored in these panels.
I find the fact that the Daily Show theme song is titled “Dog On Fire” much funnier than the BC strip.
Dog On Fire! Dog On Fire! [/Homer Simpson]
I followed the link and read the strip. I tend to agree with aldiboronti’s general point of view, but in this case, I think it was a bad strip. It wasn’t unfunny because it was about burning a dog, it was unfunny because it just wasn’t funny—and then, since the dog-burning didn’t make it funny, it was unnecessarily unpleasant and horrifying.
Hart’s grandson Mason Mastroianni took over the strip and largely took it back to the “clams got legs” era.
Anyway, that should be: BC comic used to think setting dogs on fire is funny."
You know, because Johnny Hart has been dead for two years…
B.C. is when it was funny.
Well, I don’t know that I’d call it horrifying just because the whole tone was so bland. Now I keep trying to mentally rewrite it so it’s funny.
Also. Anybody order a HOT dog?!
No, they think using the one who hid the kindling as replacement fire-starter, in an obviously over-the-top manner, is funny. That it was a dog is relevant only in that hiding the kindling, a la burying a bone, is something that one might conceive of a dog doing. People who tell “dead baby” jokes don’t think it’s funny to actually kill babies. If you don’t like humor that refers to cruelty to animals, fine, but please don’t be so disingenuous as to think that those who do find the cruelty funny. The humor is in irony, absurdity (such as burning a pet – something no one* would do), or some other factor.
*Yes, there are some sickos who would do it, but the point is no normal psychologically healthy person would even consider it, which makes it absurd. The humor is geared to normal folks, not aberrant ones.
But … but … (to paraphrase the second reader response at the above link) … what about the children? [weep, choke, sob]
Really? I honestly had no idea. I thought BC was still in the papers in the sense that Peanuts is still in the papers.