0007 Matinee Soup 'Light Breakfast'

0007 Matinee Soup 'Light Breakfast', originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

Yup. Sometimes, Bambi can't resist a pun. It's true.

When I first wrote this one, I had the lines reversed. But that breaks a comedy rule... you need to end with the punchline, not start with it.

It's not that the joke DOESN'T work the other way round. It simply changes the nature of the 'laugh'. (I put 'laugh' in inverted commas cos I don't expect EVERYone to find EVERY Matinee Soup joke funny, simply cos I find them funny.)

The way I've presented the joke here, we have the setup: 'I had a light breakfast'. Followed by the speech bubble break into a new panel. With the punchline delivered after a very slight speaking pause: 'I ate the bedside lamp.' Followed by a change of 'camera angle', and the tail-end of Bambi's exit.

There were two things I toyed with. One was making the first two panels into one bigger panel. I resisted that, cos it destroys the amount of time occupied by the pause.

The other thing I tried was having Bambi's 'owner' shouting, 'Bambi! Did you chew the bedside lamp??' with Bambi telling the viewer, 'I had a light breakfast.' This is probably funnier than the current version. But it's not quite in Bambi's character.

The way I've opted to go is to keep Bambi completely aware of her actions, and the consequences. She's in total control of her life.

This painting was made on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc using ArtRage 2.2. A bunch of my friends were sitting in my living room watching THE SECRET on my big screen video projector while I worked, with me occasionally looking up.

PS: Hey... have you seen my buttons yet?