I See… Why the Sunday Comics Have Become More Hilarious

The Mormon Third Eye takes comedy very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it conducted a very superficial, subjective, but nonetheless extended academic study over a 50-year period to conclude that the Sunday comics are 50% funnier now than they were when I was a kid.

I distinctly remember as a kid spending Sunday afternoons after church with the Sunday comics. For a quintessentially socially awkward boy-child with friends that endured me out of purely religious obligation, my regular Sunday dates with Beetle Bailey and Charlie Brown were more than merely humorous; they were inspirational and life-sustaining.  I also remember feeling robbed, however, upon discovering that at least half of the comics weren’t technically funny.  They dealt with more serious and intense subjects, like love, marriage, crime, and relationships.  They may have kept a reader’s attention, but there was no humor involved. Dick Tracy and Mary Worth come to mind. My innate oddness translated into weekly calculations on what percentage of the funny papers were actually funny.  The average usually ran around 50%.

Imagine how encouraged I was, then, when approximately 45 years later I conducted the same objective study again on 21^st century funny papers and was able to determine that 100% of the comic strips in the Sunday paper could be classified as “funny”!  Lately my regular Sunday paper has consist of a quick Internet search; however, on a recent business trip a massive Sunday paper was delivered to my room, which included an eternal nine-page comics section with 18 different incredibly funny strips! 

Why? What justified such an enormous increase in hilarity? 

The Mormon Third Eye knows.  Life was much simpler as a child. My whole existence was a continuous round of playing with toys, bikes, and six brothers and sisters.  The stress and tension induced by Dick Tracy being shot by gangsters and Mary Worth getting dumped by another boyfriend restored balance in my life.  Nowadays, however, my world is filled with wars and worries of worldwide economic and political pressures that threaten to destroy families, communities, and nations.  Now I need my comics to be 100% funny all of the time. Balance restored!