Creased Comics

Cartoonist, animator, and bootleg-voice-over artist Brad Neely is my new hero. His unusual and sometimes profane humor may not strike everyone squarely on the funny bone, but I love it. Neely's one-panel cartoons are similar to Gary Larson's classic "Far Side" comics, but they tend to go a little further, even. The characters are so self-absorbed, desperate, and pathetic that they could almost be real people.



The artist also has, in spades, one of the key ingredients of funny, which is the ability to perceive the masked absurdities of life and society, and to reveal them hilariously.



I just love the one with the shark. The stoked dumb-asses in the boat are being delivered precisely the spectacle they came for. It brings to mind the way nature shows pander to our obsession for thrills and our inability to appreciate nature unless it's over-dubbed with macho narration.

Brad Neely is famous for some other stuff besides his single-panel cartoons. He narrates over the first Harry Potter movie with his own sly script in "Wizard People, Dear Readers", and he has a series of short animated cartoons on the comedy website "superdeluxe". The animated cartoons are pretty risque, so, you know, don't say I didn't warn you. The clip below is from Wizard People, which is tamer.