Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain : How to Come Up With Jokes for Cartoons and Comic Strips

Hart, a regular contributor to Mad Magazine and a comedy screenwriter, has produced a manual with equal emphasis on the art of cartooning and the art of comedy. He has the requisite chapters on how to draw funny characters, but he comes into his own when he analyses pacing and rhythm, set-up and punch lines, and the differences between dramatic and comedic scenes. Certain words, he maintains, are ordinary and certain ones funny (e.g., fat is ordinary, bloated is funny, four is ordinary, five is funny?as are all odd numbers). This and Robin Hall's The Cartoonist's Workbook: Drawing, Writing Gags, Selling (LJ 11/15/97) are the two best such books available.