The World is Sick

The Funnies

The Funnies. GIVE THEM BACK, YOU BASTARDS.

The Straits Times prints a small section of comic strips in the Life! section every weekday and Saturday, and a much larger, and in-colour set on Sundays. My issue with them began a long time ago, when they replaced the beloved comic Bizarro, with a horrible, terrible one named Insanity Streak.

I have a few problems with Insanity Streak.

One: IT’S NOT FUNNY. Half the jokes they make are things that may have been funny a decade or so ago… in a third world country, in a parallel universe. The humour is unbelievably weak. A lot of the time, there isn’t even a joke. 

A few days ago, they printed one that showed a guy and a mermaid at a restaurant. The guy suggests that they order seafood, which makes the mermaid angry. The comic was captioned with something about the date not going well. Supposedly they were trying to hint at the mermaid being outraged by cannibalism or something. I say, what? Where do mermaids live? IN THE SEA. What do you eat in the sea? SEAFOOD. I mean, come on, does anyone bother to think things through anymore? Even Spongebob Squarepants did a better take on this. In the Fry-cook Olympics thing, Patrick causes boiling oil to spill onto a crowd of fish. Another fish then comes along to put a sign saying “Fish sticks- $1” in front of them.

And just yesterday, the comic had a waitress reading off some orders “… a latte, and an AB positive.” Sure enough, there’s a vampire at the table. What’s funny about that? That vampires drink blood? The suggestion that vampires are particular about the blood types they drink? Perhaps they were attempting to pass off the juxtaposition of a lord of the night in a café as humour. 

I could go on, but this would require me to look at even more newspapers. I don’t remember every bad comic.

So. Two: I hate the art style. This is entirely subjective, I know, but I just loathe the way people are drawn in that comic. Gigantic, bulbous noses. Unnatural growths that shape the skull into a nightmarish cylinder with facial features. 

Three: The font. I hate it so much. Whenever they have try one of those caption-style comics, they print the words in different fonts and sizes, exaggerating some words while diminishing others. Supposedly, this creates some sort of humorous effect. Emphasising nouns with “outrageous’ fonts does not make things funny. When they combine this with an especially unfunny comic, the effect is fury-inducing.

Related, I also hate the way they put the words in. Who ever talks like that? Really. Go read a few of them, and you’ll understand what I mean.

All I’m saying is, GIVE US BIZARRO BACK.

As if displacing Bizarro with this trash wasn’t bad enough, they took out a third of the Sunday comics. Last week, I noticed that a the Sunday comics, which normally spanned two and a half pages, has been amputated to just a page and a half. 

What I hate most about this change is that they took out Wizard of Id. That one was almost always entertaining. 

At least they left Sherman’s Lagoon in, although that’s a bit like saying “good thing they only took both my legs and one testicle away. I’m glad they didn’t touch my earlobes.”

Why, Straits Times? Do you want Singaporeans not to be happy? What is so important that needs to be put in the lifestyle section that you need to remove comics for? A fancier horoscope page? That goddamn “hot lingo” section(which, by the way, I also hate, very very much)?

Jeez. I have nothing to look forward to on Sundays anymore.