Thursday, July 24, 2008

I hope this is going somewhere

I Hate Lamp may as well have been called I Hate Jokes. There's no funny here -- at the most there's an "Oh nose!"

If this is a one-shot strip it seems like a terrible, terrible strip.

However, it may be a terrible strip with a purpose (a hidden cache of X-Men comics valuable enough to send Francis to college?), so I will wait and see. (I am not reading ahead.)

(UPDATE: It was not going anywhere.)

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

There was a joke? I didn't get it.

Anonymous said...

It was slapstick.

Chorius said...

Slapstick? Isn't slapstick supposed to be funny?

Anonymous said...

So are webcomics, in theory.

R.W.McGee said...

that was f*ing terrible. I'm embarrassed for Kurtz, truly.

Another Whiner said...

My first thought on seeing this was that somehow Cole had opened a hole in the space-time continuum, because that's what the art looks like to me. That could've been a super fun 4 week plot!

Anonymous said...

Sweet mother of all that is holy!

I make PvP a weekly read, and THIS is what caps off the first 5-strip-run?

Like FSM I really hope this is going somewhere. If not, it's got to be one of the worst strips in PvP history. Maybe the worst.

I think I was wrong before. The shark's not a panda. It's a goddamned lamp.

Anonymous said...

Playing this sound after the last panel really highlights the strip's essence:
http://www.sadtrombone.com/

Anonymous said...

The hell?! What happened to college? The [censored for your consideration] panda gets two weeks, but some interesting is about to happen and it gets one day and a decade old movie plot?

Anonymous said...

Yawn. Another day, another bad comic.

sshoys said...

I actually anticipate some sort of settlement from the light company for damages from the falling light. Cole will use that to help send Frances to the college he wants to go to.

Unknown said...

Look at Cole's head in the last panel.

The art looks copy-and-pasted from the last panel except with a different mouth.

Are you telling me the lamp gave no indication it was going to fall? Even if it was a sudden occurrence, would Cole's head stay absolute rigid? No, no it would not.

Lazy and terrible.

Anonymous said...

This has to be an inside joke. There's no other explanation.

Anonymous said...

This is clearly one of those "slice of life" comics. It immediately struck me as one of those things that might have actually happened to Kurtz, and the strip it more for himself and any who witnessed the event.

Anonymous said...

"It immediately struck me as one of those things that might have actually happened to Kurtz..."

That seems unlikely. Those light fixtures are anchored to the real ceiling so that firefighters can hose down the false ceiling in case of a fire and, you guessed it, not get seriously hurt by a falling fixture!

Jai said...

I flat-out don't understand half of what I'm seeing in the last panel, and the half I do understand looks pretty bad.

This is a terrible strip, and I don't think it's setting a future strip up. The joke is simply that Cole is worried about the chair falling out from under him, but then - get this - the LIGHT falls on him! Oh, man! :P

It's simple slapstick, and even that doesn't work out. There doesn't need to be 5 panels (Panel 4 is useless, just a simply copy of the previous panel with no new information beyond the direction that Cole is looking). There is no transition between "Cole about to put light replacement in" and "Light fixture is on Cole's head - or something; maybe there's a cinder block on top of the light fixture as well". There isn't even a big, obnoxious "Kerr-ash!" sound. And thus, the already-lame slapstick joke is further reduced to ashes by poor implementation.

Anonymous said...

The whole point of the joke is that Cole keeps saying "Hold it steady, hold it steady," as if he could see getting hurt by the chair tipping/sliding. He did NOT expect the light falling on him being what gets him hurt.

Ha....right?

Unknown said...

No.

R.W.McGee said...

It suffers worse when explained...

Unknown said...

It kind of hurts, but this may actually be considered a 'running gag'. In quotes or semiquotes or whatever they're called, because it always happens to Cole. Cole is doing something-> Stuff happens-> Cole is standing perfectly still as something bad happens to him.

That's happened more than once, I believe.

Anonymous said...

Here's how to improve it marginally: remove Francis' pointless comment which slows down a joke which needs to be quick and snappy, and have Cole in the third panel remind the reader that he doesn't want to hold over by emphasising the reason that he wants the chair held steady.

But no amount of improvement is going to make it any good.

Anonymous said...

What should have happened is Scott dumps one of the other panels and after the fixture hits Cole, draws himself (as he's done before) giving 'Limerickx's explanation as to knowingly admit how hackneyed these types of "Wait for it... wait for it... ooh, you weren't expecting that, were you?" set-ups really are.

Anonymous said...

This strip could have benefitted from a panda attack at the end instead of the light falling. But as was mentioned the panda arc seems to have passed. I wonder if the panda will move out of the office since A) Brent was mackin' on his woman, and B) apparently the building is falling apart.

Anonymous said...

I would move out of the office because all of its tenants have become HORRIBLY BORING CLICHES.

Anonymous said...

This comic is just a not funny rehash of the scene in the Simpson's movie when Homer is nailing something into his roof (with Bart).

Anonymous said...

YOU GUYS DID YOU READ THE COMIC TODAY

poor little scratch broke my heart!!!

R.W.McGee said...

Oh my! The girls are saying one thing...but the cat is thinking SOMETHING ELSE! What sort of genius might we expect from Scott next? Pie fights in the PvP cafeteria??? Stay tuned!

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