How to Cartoon for Comedy Comma Perfectly

OR:
Fair Use for Fun, for Fun Games, and for Absolutely No Profit

Cartooning is like sculpture: an art of subtraction. By ruthlessly but correctly removing all extraneous elements, this simple blend of text and image can be transcendent, can encompass and convey virtually anything a mind can conceive, with nothing more than lines on paper.

Best of all, cartooning can be very, very funny. Humor can be many things! Mostly humor is thought of as (a type of) an unexpected juxtaposition, though certainly not every juxtaposition is funny, nor are all surprises funny. (Nor is it entirely clear that all funny things will have an unexpected juxtaposition! Theory work is pretty difficult, it turns out.) Nevertheless, it's safe to say that we can expect most funny things to have an element of unexpected juxtaposition. Henri Bergson described humor as the "mechanical encrusted upon the living," which is my favorite definition, because it is so stoned that it is itself funny. Also "encrustation" is a pretty funny word / concept.

When seeking to surprise and delight and amuse—that is, to provide humor—by means of a cartoon, specifically, it is well to break the whole down to its constituent parts. If the cartoon be composed of text and image, then should both the text in isolation and the image as (a) standalone sans texty companion be funny.

Let's examine an example.

Here is a standard—indeed classic—format: three panels, read in order, left to right. Note here that I am using "read" in a metaphoric sense, as there are no words to be read at all! No, merely three images in sequence. Or, more accurately: three funny images in a funny sequence. Bask in the humor. This ... this is a funny cartoon, all by itself.

(When the images are this funny, you really don't even need any text.)

Imbibe the words, next. We see with no ambiguity or uncertainty that, just as with the images, these words are very, very funny words.

(Why even sully text this funny with images?)

We would expect the combination of these words and this text to be funny, even if that combination (read: juxtaposition) is not unexpected [mind-blown emoji]! Just for the sake of completeness, though, let's review the combination.

(Wallow in the perfected comedic whole.)

Remember: funny is as funny does. When you want to create and endure humor, attend to each aspect as though that aspect alone would to carry the entire success solamente, even as, when you attempt cookery, you ensure the flavor of the dish complete is in every ingredient separately. Or, if you have less time, just rip off this cartoon, because it's truly funny stuff.

Couple references: https://iep.utm.edu/humor/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor_in_Freud
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/.