I got an e-mail the other day from regular Pooch blogger Benjaminlinus wondering something that seems to come up fairly regularly: if I can shed any light on where the ideas for Pooch storylines come from. As he noted the blog itself seems to have provided a few concepts lately, from the laser eye surgery I myself underwent (Hudson got laser nose surgery) to the series with Poncho and what turned out to be Carmen’s sister’s baby. (I’ve got a few other ideas still jotted in margins based on things a few of you regulars have mentioned too).
Of course there is no easy answer to this. One thing I can say for certain, almost never do ideas for jokes come from funny things that were said in the real world. For some reason no matter how hard my friends and I laugh at jokes very rarely can I translate any of them into a strip. When I try these are almost invariably the strips my editor John Glynn responds to with an “I don’t get it.” There are a few exceptions, such as the brilliant “I don’t so much carpe diem so much as I carpe p.m.” line by girlfriend said one afternoon around 2:30.
I’ll give you a demonstration. The other day I was sitting with some friends at brunch. We were waiting for the final member of our party to arrive before ordering, and he was late. When at last he appeared he apologized, saying that he had “a monster allergy attack.” I responded, “You’re allergic to monsters?” Everyone found this funny, because it was clear that he’d used a random phrase and I had spontaneously reacted to it. But the phrase it odd enough that if I put it in the mouth of a character in panel 3 its oddness would telegraph the punch line in panel 4. Ergo, not funny.
As psycho as this may sound, the best I can describe the writing process is that I put a concept in front of my characters and they have a conversation about it and I wait until they say something funny and then snip that part out. For better or for worse I have a set of characters laid out with distinctive personalities, and therefore something like this is possible. It might make it more difficult to plug a funny idea into a world where no character in that world would plausibly say the punch line in question, (say, for example, almost any Far Side joke), but the upside is that strong characters can generate comedy without even requiring actual words (for readers familiar with the strip, anyway). If Chazz asks Poncho to go fetch the newspaper in the rain, Poncho’s look alone at Chazz might be enough to spark a laugh, because you anticipate his attitude.
As I’ve mentioned in other interviews too, I’ve tried to make Pooch Café as non-dog as a dog strip can be, partially because there are many other dog strips already, and partially for my own sanity. After 8 years it’s pretty hard to come up with another joke about detesting the mailman or drinking toilet water. So I plug in human issues. The recent story where Poncho is afraid that Chazz and Carmen are having a baby is clearly sibling rivalry. I’ve done storylines involving jealousy, ethical dilemmas, wounded pride, fear of death, all sorts of things I seriously doubt dogs are troubled by but do generate loads of comic potential. There’s nothing funnier than a character with lots of personality flaws, or one who full of bluster who receives his comeuppance (especially if it’s physical comeuppance). However, no cartoonist should ever be above a good pie-in-the-face gag.
