OK, I know that this isn’t exactly an intellectual comic strip, but it’s maddening to me to have something go over my head.
First panel: Wizard, looking through telescope, says, “I’ve discovered a black hole!”
Second panel: King walks away, saying, “Yeh, right!”
What’s the gag I’m missing (or is there one)? To me, this seems about as pointless as they get. Why not:
“I like potatoes.”
“I don’t.”
This seems about the same. 
So, is there something I’m missing? Can someone explain?
Maybe the joke is, you can’t actually see a black hole through a telescope?
Incidentally, I would be overjoyed if I saw a strip as surreally baffling and pointless as your potato example.
Maybe the person who writes the stripped has realized punchlines don’t matter and has stopped trying. It isn’t as though anyone who reads the daily comics these days actually expects them to be funny . . .
It looks like he’s got the telescope backwards. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be the joke, though.
The telescope isn’t backwards (it just has a large eyepiece).
I think the joke is simply playing on the fact that “black hole” is redundanct to anybody who doesn’t know astronomy. To the King, it’s as if the Wizard had said, “I just discovered a wet puddle.”
Barry
Errr… make that “redundant” :smack:
I’m glad somebody started this thread. I thought it was just me this morning when I read the strip.
I don’t buy it. You don’t have to know a lick about astronomy to have heard of a black hole. I’d be willing to bet that 2nd grade school kids who can’t place the United States on a map could tell you what a black hole is.
My guess is that it’s a running story that will run this whole week.
My guess is that it’s just The Wizard of Id, which is only funny by accident and rarely at that. Just to show you how unfunny TWoI actually is, our local newspaper changed their Sunday comics format to dispose with the title panel, the oversize first panel of every Sunday comic. In TWoI this panel is often the setup for a mini-joke, the punch line of which comes in the first actual story panel. With the title panel gone, all you that’s left of that joke is the lonely little punchline dangling off the beginning of the strip.
And yet there’s no difference in Funniness Quotient. TWoI’s FQ is undetectable with or without the entire setup for the first joke in the strip! This is how unfunny the comic is.
My suggestion is that the “black hole” is the window. The wizard says “black hole”, and the king thinks he’s referring to the window into the night, not the astronomical phenomenon.
Doesn’t explain how the telescope seems to be floating in the air though…
Maybe this is one of those jokes where yopu need to understand the characters to get the joke.
The King’s an asshole and the wizard’s incompetent, so the King automatically dismisses the wizard’s claim of having discovered something . . .
I’m guessing. Honestly, I’m sticking with my original theory, that the writer has realized no one cares and is phasing out punchlines to see if anyone notices.
On one will.
Maybe the wizard is pointing at the eyepiece–or “hole” if you will–of the telescope.
We, the astute readers, know that he means he has discovered a black hole somewhere in the cosmos. However, the diminutive and less astute king mistakenly assumes the wizard is referring to the “black hole” you look through in the telescope and dismisses this “discovery” with a snotty, “Yeh, right!”
Or maybe Brant Parker dropped a tab before doing that particular strip.
I doubt it. I have never EVER seen that strip do a running story. I rather doubt he’d put the thought necessary into the effort of starting one now.
Maybe someone could explain the July 3rd strip to me. I don’t know which is worse now.
I mean, the whole WoI is pathetic. I scanned some dates to get a sense of this guy’s humor…and I don’t get any of it, probably because it isn’t there to get.
Deep Thought: If a comic tells a joke, and no one laughs, how can you say he told a joke? He told something, but it wasn’t a joke, because it’s the laughing that makes it a joke. Don’t laugh, this isn’t a joke, unless of course you do laugh in which case this would be a joke.
Does it help to know that Jonny Hart is at least part-collaborator on Wizard of Id? Considering that his solo effort, B.C., has been around for decades with absolutely no humor whatsoever, I’ve never expected more from Id, really.
It requires collaboration!?
Well, my hopes that maybe it’s a running story have been dashed. Unless there’s some sort of connection between black holes and casinos (there’s an actual joke to be made in there, but I doubt the WoI sketcher can see it). I vote “not a joke.”
This strip could work two ways. The bar, as in a very large wooden counter on which drinks are served, has been lowered to accomodate persons of lower stature. Or the patronage of persons of lower stature is now encouraged because the bar’s standards have been lowered. Not very funny either way, IMO.