Comics I Don’t Understand

Snoopy’s Last Flight

Cidu Bill on Aug 29th 2008

Okay, Red Baron shoots him down so it’s his last flight. Bummer. But what’s the joke?

Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, Snoopy, comic strips, comics, humor | 35 responses so far

35 Responses to “Snoopy’s Last Flight”

Randy Aug 29th 2008 at 12:22 am 1

As one of the few pole willing to admit that Peanuts was both unfunny and boring, I rather like seeing Snoopy get shot down.
Randy Aug 29th 2008 at 12:25 am 2

Check that…people not pole. Sorry.
Ron Aug 29th 2008 at 12:25 am 3

The joke is that he’s actually gotten the doghouse to fly.
Nameless Fairy Aug 29th 2008 at 01:30 am 4

I thought the joke was the perspective on that plane. Red Baron? I’d have thought M.C. Escher, myself.
Mattie Aug 29th 2008 at 01:46 am 5

Poohaps this will clarify:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoopy_Vs._The_Red_Baron
Cidu Bill Aug 29th 2008 at 01:51 am 6

Mattie, I’m very familiar with the whole Snoopy and the Red Baron thing. I actually owned the record when it came out. Yes, I am that old. I just don’t understand what the JOKE here is supposed to be.
Sridhar Aug 29th 2008 at 02:02 am 7

The joke is that he actually has ended up dogfighting the Red Baron (something which was previously only imaginative play for him); however, alas, ironically, achieving this dream has only ended in his terrible demise.
Sridhar Aug 29th 2008 at 02:04 am 8

That is to say, as Ron pointed out, he actually managed to get that doghouse to fly… but it turns out the Red Baron is also actually still around and hunting him down! (Only with no mercy or lucky escapes). That’s kinda funny, right?
Patrick Aug 29th 2008 at 03:55 am 9

No.
Lord-z Aug 29th 2008 at 04:53 am 10

This is what Popculturecomics does. It takes things from popular culture and it puts it in unfamiliar surroundings, in this case, Snoopy actually fighting against unfamiliar surroundings. At least this time he has done something from the comics, instead his usual gig of just namedropping.
Chipper Aug 29th 2008 at 08:36 am 11

Every time Snoopy fought the Red Baron (in his imagination), he got shot down. So what’s the difference here? He just got shot down AGAIN. Also, the Red Baron had a triplane, not a biplane. Maybe the joke is hiding behind the biplane.
Powers Aug 29th 2008 at 09:13 am 12

There doesn’t always have to be a joke, per se. Sometimes cartoonists draw something just to illustrate the absurd.
RUSH Aug 29th 2008 at 10:09 am 13

Seriously, no-one thought that was funny? I thought everyone knew about Snoopy’s imaginary “dog fights” with the Red Baron!! Also regardless of if he was shot down every time or not, it was always in his imagination! The fact that the REAL Red Baron ACTUALLY in real life shot him down is hilarious!!
John Aug 29th 2008 at 10:15 am 14

In the Snoopy/Red Baron fantasies, Snoopy got shot down all the time, so it isn’t really clear how this is a different take on it.
Nicole Aug 29th 2008 at 11:12 am 15

In all of Snoopy’s fatasasies, he lives to fight another day. The author has made it clear that Snoopy has gone to that big kennel in the sky after the real dog fight. So Whether or not this is a joke is a matter of opinion. If you think Snoopy’s death is a knee slapper then yes – it is funny.
Neddo Aug 29th 2008 at 11:21 am 16

I think sometimes you expect too much, Bill. Often you’ll point out something about a comic and then ask what the joke is, but what you pointed out IS the joke. No, it’s not funny, but it’s supposed to be the joke.
Cidu Bill Aug 29th 2008 at 11:49 am 17

Nedo, I’, the Eternal Optomist: I always expect more.
Dave Van Domelen Aug 29th 2008 at 12:02 pm 18

As long as we’re going after plane designs, wing-mounted machineguns were a WWII thing…they’d rip off the wings of the more fragile WWI planes. So the biplane can’t even be the one shooting.
Scott E Aug 29th 2008 at 12:33 pm 19

Randy - I don’t think you’re one of the only people “willing to admit that Peanuts is both unfunny and boring,” it’s just that everyone else recognizes how brilliant it was. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean the fans are being deceitful by saying they like it when they really don’t.
ty Aug 29th 2008 at 01:25 pm 20

I’m with Neddo. I think sometimes we try too hard NOT to understand. And why the fuss over technical anachronisms - they don’t affect the joke. We’re talking about a flying doghouse, a canine Walter Mitty, and a “what if it really happened” set-up.
Mark M Aug 29th 2008 at 01:50 pm 21

Lord-z got it. I’ve been following this strip and this one seems pretty typical - a turn for the worse that you didn’t expect. There’s one with Bert beating on Ernie while he’s sleeping, and Ronald McDonald coming home to find Wendy with the king from Burger King. Not funny by itself, but coupled with the fact it puts characters into unexpected situations, it makes good humor for some.
John Aug 29th 2008 at 03:17 pm 22

Mark M - Except that this isn’t a turn that you didn’t expect. To the contrary, it happened pretty frequently in the original strip.

Randy - You probably started reading the strip sometime after about 1975. In its first two decades, this was the most brilliant strip ever produced. In the last half of its life, though, Schulz had very little more to say.
Mark M Aug 29th 2008 at 03:33 pm 23

But referring to it as his “last flight” indicates it happened for real. Snoopy dies instead of just waking up from his daydream. See RUSH@13
rabrab Aug 29th 2008 at 04:00 pm 24

I’m with Nicole. In all of the Schultz “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” strips, Snoopy *always* managed to land safely, usually in no-man’s land or behind enemy lines, but safely. He lived to fly another day. This time he wasn’t so lucky.
The Ploughman Aug 29th 2008 at 04:44 pm 25

There’s common ground between the two discussions going on here: Peanuts being “boring” and the humor in Snoopy being shot out of the sky. The humor of the cartoon comes from its (supposed) subversive nature.

John alludes to the change in Peanuts in the 70s when it became more product-oriented and, well, sappy. This latter Peanuts that younger generations would be familiar with could be humorously subverted by coupling it with a violent gun battle. The “old-style” Peanuts which wasn’t so gentle and cuddly as its later incarnation was subversive in its own right, so the unexpected violence of the Red Baron battle depicted here wouldn’t seem quite so out of place.

Does that make any sense? Subversive humor is a tricky thing and interesting to me - what works, what doesn’t, how it works, etc.
Oy vey Aug 29th 2008 at 11:28 pm 26

I don’t think I’d think this particular strip was hilarious in any case, but maybe it would’ve worked better with a caption like, “Snoopy’s first real flight was also his last.” But there would definitely be some better jokes about Walter Mitty-ish types colliding with reality.
fuzzmaster Aug 29th 2008 at 11:56 pm 27

Snoopy’s flights were … imaginary? You mean, not real, like him sleeping on the roof peak of his doghouse, or playing shortstop, or playing hockey on a frozen birdbath? Or Charlie Brown being stripped down to his shorts by a line drive, or Schroeder being able to play Beethoven sonatas on a toy piano?

So — about that whole Great Pumpkin thing, then …
Cidu Bill Aug 29th 2008 at 11:59 pm 28

Fuzzmaster (and everybody else), have you seen this?
Seismic-2 Aug 30th 2008 at 08:23 am 29

Amd since when did the Red Baron every fly a biplane??? Surely no one has been associated with an aircraft so closely as Baron Manfred von Richtofen was with the Fokker DRA triplane.
Seismic-2 Aug 30th 2008 at 08:24 am 30

Typo — should be Fokker “DR1″ triplane.
Patrick Aug 30th 2008 at 02:57 pm 31

Seismic, I think it’s kind of funny that, in a post where you mis-typed the words “and” and “ever,” the typo you chose to correct is the one none of us would have noticed.

(Also, I nominate Lindberg and the Spirit of St. Louis for that “closely associated with an aircraft” title).
Bob Aug 30th 2008 at 04:13 pm 32

I’ll toss Gary Powers and the U2 into the pool.
ty Aug 30th 2008 at 11:27 pm 33

Howard Hughes and the Spruce Goose. Snoopy and his Sopwith Camel.
Alexandra Erin Aug 30th 2008 at 11:58 pm 34

The “joke” is the same as in the image of Hobbes standing over the bloody, mauled corpse of Calvin. It’s taking a harmless bit of fantasy fluff and imagining it as deadly reality. In Snoopy’s usual “Dogfights”, he can be shot down any number of times because it’s fantasy… but here it’s his “last flight” because he gets shot down and dies.
LC Aug 31st 2008 at 11:32 pm 35

Maybe the joke is he doesn’t have a parachute with him?