This is a fun book for teens that are interested in graphic novels, comics, and other funny stuff. My teen boys are enjoying trying to create their own with the tips they found in this book.

This is the perfect Holiday Gift for that friend who loves to explain things to you because they will get the joke and thank you for it!

This book was a wonderfully insightful look at the power and art of the One Panel Comic. Filled with not only with an education in how this style of comic works, it his book is filled with some of the best Gag Comics from The New Yorker for the reader to examine as Write and Hasner discuss the power of this genre. Is the successful comic based on the art or the text? What categories of humor can find in the most successful examples? Is it humor or is it wit that makes you laugh harder when you read these? Why do we even laugh at them at all? These are some of the great question that this book challenges a reader to rise to. And in the best compliment to these deceptively simple works of art, you will never look at these the same way again.

For every New Yorker reader who enters the captions contest and doodles their own cartoons wondering what can get them that step closer to submitting them, this is a masterclass in getting there.

Phil Witte and Rex Hesner's, two cartoonists, dissect the single-panel gag cartoon as a medium and attempt to pin down what makes the best of them great.

The book is filled with great cartoons and is peppered with quotes from legendary New Yorker cartoonists such as Roz Chast, Sam Gross, and Mick Stevens. Witte and Hesner’s admiration for the craft is clear, and I love that they treat cartooning as a legitimate art form.

One of my favorite parts is the overview of recurring themes and stock characters in cartoons, from desert islands to pirates, and the peek at how cartoonists subvert these conventions. The authors also provide a nuanced discussion of different types of humor—observational, absurd, satirical, etc.—breaking down the importance of wording in captions, plus the unique challenges of cartoons without captions.

While I can't say I learned much that was new, I still enjoyed this more than two other books on the subject that I recently read, Lawrence Wood's Your Caption Has Been Selected: More Than Anyone Could Possibly Want to Know About The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest and Bob Mankoff's The Naked Cartoonist: A New Way to Enhance Your Creativity, because the authors here took care of not making the book about themselves.

My only qualm was that they seem to think that Edward Steed can't draw—I honestly don't get it, I think he's a fantastic draftsman. Well worth reading nonetheless.

Comedy is very hard to analyse, as soon as you put it under the microscope it stops being funny. However this book is a very readable guide to single frame cartoons. It explains why some things are funnier than others, why changing the order of words can make the caption funnier, and tells you that the quality of the artwork is not important, amongst a lot of other things. Anyone who wants to start cartooning will find this invaluable, anyone interested in humour will enjoy the book. It is well written, a light and interesting read and quite suitable for all ages. It is also full of very funny illustrative cartoons to help get the point across.

Funny Stuff delivered exactly what I expected: packed with cartoons and analysis as to why they're funny.

The book is ideal for anyone aspiring to draw funny comics.

However, it's also useful for someone who wants to know why they laugh.
It explores the art and science of making a hilarious comic - one drawing that makes you spill your drink.

What makes a cartoon? What comes first—the drawing or the caption? Should you be more of a writer or more of an artist to be successful?

Find the answers to all these questions and more in “Funny Stuff”. Philip Witte and Rex Hesner have been drawing and analyzing cartoons for many years, and in this book, they take deeper looks at the one panel gag cartoon. You’ll see many examples of previously published cartoons, and you’ll learn *why* they were chosen for publication.

This is fascinating stuff, whether you want to be a cartoonist, or whether, like me, you’re just interested in expanding your knowledge base.

Pick up a copy on July 16th!

Thank you to NetGalley and Prometheus for the advance copy. I am writing this review voluntarily.