Is It Still Funny?

At my [Mark's] first real job after high school, a coworker introduced me to the joys of the daily funny pages. Every morning break, he would read page one, I would read page two, and then
we would swap. "All the news that's fit to print," he called it. I was hooked.


I was the cartoonist for my college newspaper. For years afterward, I created cartoons for fun. In my thirties, my job at a law firm included writing a newsletter and I got to create a cartoon for every issue--all "in jokes," specifically aimed at the firm's target audience.

I've been reviewing my old cartoons for posting in the blog, and I find that some are still funny but others clearly had their time and place, and no longer "tickle my funny bone." Some are simply incomprehensible out of context.

Ping and I talked this morning about how our culture and personal preferences shape the kinds of things that make us laugh. Some of my cartoons, she simply "doesn't get." Fair enough. Can jokes be universal? I don't know, but it was interesting to ponder the idea.

Now that we're in Taiwan and we have a truly cross-cultural audience, I'm fascinated by the new lens through which I view my cartoons, especially my catalog of old ones. The goal is to give a good laugh to as many people as possible--and, at the same time, to be kind.

I'm interested to see what new cartoons will emerge.