My personal favorite Far Side - Comedy Continent: Mountain Goat in a Cloud Bank
There was a very funny British cartoonist named Thelwell, who did lots of cartoons about children and their ponies. The ponies all had very tiny legs and heavy bodies.
My favorite of his (I couldn’t find a link) shows a little girl hanging on for dear life to a wildly bucking pony. Meanwhile, her mother’s frowning and holding the hand of a much younger, sobbing girl. The caption is something like, “Don’t be selfish, Clementine. Let Alicia have a turn.”
If anyone can find the Far Side cartoon with the frog on stage sitting in a wheelchair singing about the GREEEENS–the last line in the song is about his legs being deep fried–I would desperately appreciate the link!
~VOW
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Killkulonhas made me laugh for years.
I suppose this could count as a single panel cartoon:
Back in the '70s, National Lampoon did a brilliant parody of Boy’s Life, the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America. It was called Boy’s Real Life, and featured articles like how to play frog baseball and how to accurately compute trajectories for dropping large rocks from highway overpasses onto motor vehicles below. It also had a joke page, filled with every dirty joke you heard back in fifth grade, told exactly the way a fifth-grader would tell them.
The cover was a spot-on painting of a bunch of red-blooded American boys in Scout uniforms, singing and laughing around a campfire at night with their pup tents in the background.
It was the kind of picture you stare at for a couple of minutes, asking yourself “What’s so funny about that?”
Finally it dawns on you …
they’re having a circle-jerk! :smack:
re: Salmon dave
Apparently Bill Nye the Science Guy did a video of Salmon Dave singing Sole man
“Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Killkulon has made me laugh for years”
This cartoon? I’ll ask - other than having a not particularly funny robot at the table, why is this funny in the least?
I laughed at that one. I think I saw that years ago, but it is still funny.
Another vote for a Farside cartoon, or Gahan Wilson.
Did you see the caption?
Here’s Gahan Wilson’s eye doctor.
And I recall a cartoon from Playboy back in the mid-70s. I got a whole bunch of copies from my friends for Christmas because I was a deputy sheriff back then. Interior of a ratty looking house with a scraggly tree decorated with a couple of ornaments. Scraggly hippy types sitting around, all holding joints with surprised looks on their faces. And Santa stepping out of the fireplace, bag in one hand, badge in the other, saying “Ho-ho-ho, you’re all busted!”.
Yeah I saw the caption. Many societies have rules/laws against marrying first cousins, so that’s not especially funny.
Another cartoon from a '70s Playboy:
A very elaborate full-color drawing of an Aztec human sacrifice ceremony … an enormous crowd of people at the foot of the pyramid, watching the priests escort the female victim up the steps…
Again, you stare at the picture, trying to figure out what’s so funny…
Until you remember that the girl is supposed to be a virgin … and there, tucked away in a corner, is a little guy trying to be inconspicuous while he laughs his ass off! 
Oh well. I think it’s a hoot and a half.
I love SMBC, its my favorite web-comic. They often have several jokes in one, right after the one, that enhances the joke as you read down.
Killkulon is a killer robot, so its funny that the dad says “Over my dead body”; you know what’s coming next. That’s the first joke. The second is that the dad is kind of justified, since the robot and the girl, assumed to be named Mary, are cousins.
Sometimes SMBC will have a 3rd joke, the artist will tell you to click a link that leads to the aftermath of the joke, which upends the expectations even more. With the Killkulon strip, maybe it would be something like “…this always happens when we visit the South”, or you find out the man in the strip wasn’t even the girl’s dad or relative, he was just some random stranger. SMBC is brilliant in that way
Or anyone this is open question re Killkulen cartoon
" I think it’s a hoot and a half."
Could you explain why? It’s a common theme - girl wants to marry some one deemed unsuitable, father forbids it. In this case, the caption tells us the forbidden love is someone many would think inappropriate and as noted illegal to marry in some societies. What makes this a funny cartoon?
Since you pointed to it, is it that it’s first cousin makes you hoot?
Well the initial impression is that the Dad doesn’t want her marrying him because he’s a killer robot, but turns out it was really because they were cousins (not exactly a typical robot/human relationship). Is it really that hard to find why this is humorous?
I didn’t see reply above when posted previous. Then editing took past limit.
“Killkulon is a killer robot”
How am I or other viewers supposed to know that? or know for that matter that the robot shown is killkulon (who I thought was the artist in fact)
I take it you know that by having seen earlier cartoons featuring and identifying robot and its homicidal proclivities?
This makes it not work as a single panel cartoon. There cannot be a requirement for specialized knowledge of the images within the cartoon. the single panel must say everything that is necessary.
I’ll mention that while robots are not an impossibility it is an impossibility for robots and humans to be first cousins and it is certainly no funnier with that addition than juast a father objecting to daughter marrying robot which isn’t clear to begin with…
All in all i have to say this is the worst, least funny cartoon in this thread. And I tuned in for a laugh.
Kee-rist - it’s as bad as my work mate who thinks Crankshaft is funny.
Oh. I always just related to it because I married my robot cousin.
Try this one, FrankJBN.
edit to add:
OK, you’re Zach Weiner toying with us, aren’t you? You thought killkulon was the artist!?
A Playboy cartoon in which a very proper-looking gentleman is wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with the wording IF YOU AIN’T A RAIDER FAN YOU AIN’T SHIT. He is imploring a coatroom clerk to (not exact wording) “Please check your records again – there seems to have been a dreadful mistake!” Meanwhile, a thuggish-looking dude in an Oakland Raiders T-shirt can be seen to the side, wearing a very proper-looking chapeau as he contentedly walks without any apparent recognition of the headgear snafu.
Do you by any chance write the copy for the Party Jokes page? 