Philosophical Friday: Makeup For Card Sharks

Sherman's Lagoon, 2014-05-08.

There are just so many ways that this joke doesn't make sense. Firstly, beige? Ordinarily I'd blame the colourist, but in this case they're sharks and there's no way they would ever be beige.

Secondly, lipstick? Do those sharks look like they have lips to you? I know the whole talking animal thing generally relies on the assumption that the talking animals do human things even when they don't make sense (like sharks sleeping in a bed), but the drawing still has to support the joke and you can't have them talking about their lips when they clearly don't have any.

Thirdly, how the hell is beige lipstick even supposed to work for a human? It wouldn't make your face hard to read, it would just make you look like you didn't have lips. Which, again, Megan doesn't.

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Dustin, 2014-05-12.

One of the running jokes in Dustin (as seen here) is that Dustin is lazy and doesn't do anything to look for a job. It would work a lot better though if there wasn't the other running joke of Dustin constantly looking for work and taking any job that comes along no matter what it is or how temporary. He works all the time.

So you end up with strips like this where Dustin's reaction comes across entirely differently than intended. He's supposed to be "Argh, I have to actually work and not be lazy any more? OMG!" or whatever but instead he's "Uhh, OK. Why is dad being nice to me this morning?"

It's like there are two comics running simultaneously, or like we're seeing two parallel universes, and none of the characters ever know which one they're in.