Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for June 16, 2010
June 15, 2010
June 17, 2010
Transcript:
Mr. Rod: There's Mr. Dominguez. Mr. Rod: He thinks of us as family. Baldo: That's nice. Mr. Rod: So let's sell him as much as we can before we have a family feud.
The thing is, Joe, is that the way Carlos and Hector have written it, it IS funny.
In a 30-minute sitcom, there’s a lot of opportunity to shift tone from funny to serious to funny. In a three-panel humor-driven (as opposed to suspense-driven or drama-driven) comic strip, there’s less so. When the purpose of a particular day’s installment is to be funny, let it be funny.
In “Baldo”, there have certainly been occasions when Hector and Carlos have gone for sentiment or drama rather than humor, but this is not one of those times. (Rarely, if ever, have they tried to be “morally instructive”, which seems to be what you want.) Let THEM determine when to go for a laugh. I suggest, here and elsewhere, you try to figure out what the cartoonist is trying to communicate, rather than trying to shoehorn what they produce into what you want to hear. Perhaps you won’t enjoy them as much (it seems that virtually every comic strip that we both read does jokes from time to time of which you disapprove), but maybe you’ll develop a better understanding of how comic strips work.