Hi-Ho
Cidu Bill on Mar 20th 2009
Let me get this straight: Doc is smart and Dopey is stupid?? Golly. But is there an actual joke involved?
Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, Snow White, comic strips, comics, humor | 26 responses so far
furrykef Mar 20th 2009 at 01:24 pm 1
The only thing I can think of is she has to break the news…
Fnord Mar 20th 2009 at 01:49 pm 2
Nope, no joke here. Just like there wasn’t a joke in the Noah cartoon, or the cat pillow one, or the Clamato one.
There is a whole class of cartoonists who grew up loving The Far Side, and came away with the idea that weird situation + panel border = humor. They fail to grasp the fact that Larson was a genius and that not just any shmoe can duplicate his style of humor.
I haven’t yet figured out how all these single-panel hacks get published in the papers. It may be because they are easy to lay out and don’t take up much space, so it’s worth taking the chance that one of them will manage to find a groove and be funny.
Bryan Irrera Mar 20th 2009 at 02:10 pm 3
…maybe it’s a commentary on dealing with stupid people, since besides Doc, the only dwarf with above average intelligence is Grumpy?
devildan Mar 20th 2009 at 02:23 pm 4
Move along, people, no humor to see here!
Elliott Mar 20th 2009 at 02:50 pm 5
Let’s have another round of Clamato and rum
Howabominable (aka Lindsey ^_^) Mar 20th 2009 at 03:23 pm 6
It might have been slightly funnier if the scored of Doc and Dopey had been switched.
Davoo Mar 20th 2009 at 03:33 pm 7
Fnord, you are quite right.
Two Dogs of Mercy Mar 20th 2009 at 03:50 pm 8
Perhaps there is irony on the look of surprise on her face, as if she hadn’t already figured out the obvious.
Two Dogs of Mercy Mar 20th 2009 at 03:50 pm 9
Perhaps there is irony on the look of surprise on her face, as if she hadn’t already figured out the obvious.
GP Mar 20th 2009 at 03:56 pm 10
She feels bad for calling him that now that she knows he has a real problem?
Keera Mar 20th 2009 at 04:40 pm 11
I think GP got it.
ctd Mar 20th 2009 at 04:42 pm 12
Dopey is smart, he just kept falling asleep during the test.
furrykef Mar 20th 2009 at 04:54 pm 13
…maybe it’s a commentary on dealing with stupid people, since besides Doc, the only dwarf with above average intelligence is Grumpy?
Um, the whole idea of “average” is that that’s what most people are.
John DiFool Mar 20th 2009 at 07:11 pm 14
What Fnord said (hmm the Fnord who is active in the HOMM community?).
Matthew Mar 20th 2009 at 08:19 pm 15
I agree with Fnord & with Lindsey. Indeed, when I saw the title at the top of the page, I expected to see “Dopey” as the smart one.
David N Mar 20th 2009 at 10:41 pm 16
The idea of switching Doc’s and Dopey’s scores would have also explained the shocked look on Snow White’s face. Not only is there no humor, there’s nothing shocking there!
Mark in Boston Mar 20th 2009 at 11:04 pm 17
Why is she making them take I.Q. tests? They aren’t little kids. They are grown men with full-time jobs. Snow White is the youngest member of the household. Maybe they should have made HER take an I.Q. test. Or at least given her a little safety training. “If a stranger offers you a piece of fruit, what should you do?”
Patrick Mar 21st 2009 at 12:38 am 18
Mark, where are you getting that she MADE them take an IQ test? Maybe Doc made them take the test so he could show off.
Matthew Mar 21st 2009 at 02:23 am 19
Well, Snow White is holding the scores as if she were the parent or the administrator of the test.
Some Statistics Nerd Mar 21st 2009 at 11:00 am 20
furrykef: That actually is not what average means. Look up the difference between mean, median, and mode.
Most people are smarter than the mean (average) intelligence. The people who are below the mean are so FAR below, they bring the whole average down. In a group of ordinary people who can function in society, you would expect most of their IQ numbers to be slightly above the average.
This probably has nothing to do with the comic.
rain Mar 21st 2009 at 12:25 pm 21
Making pop-culture references isn’t, in and of itself, comedic.
The references have to be comedic to be, y’know, comedy.
But some people (hello, Seth MacFarlane!) think that simply making a reference to pop culture is funny. They’re wrong.
With this cartoon, I guess we’re supposed to think “I recognize her! She’s Snow White! And that Dopey dwarf sure is stupid! Doc is the smart one! HAW HAW!”
Or maybe the cartoonist just did mediocre work to meet deadline and earn a food pellet.
Jestempies Mar 21st 2009 at 05:57 pm 22
I agree with Two Dogs of Mercy, the surprise on her face is the joke.
Mark in Boston Mar 21st 2009 at 06:11 pm 23
SSN: Intelligence Quotient is supposed to be “mental age” divided by chronological age. If you are ten years old and you are as smart as a ten-year-old (whatever that means), then your IQ is 100. If you are as smart as an eleven-year-old, your IQ is 110. It’s all very pseudo-scientific and pseudo-mathematical, and “average” isn’t mean, median or mode. It just means “average”, or whatever you want “average” to mean.
Prosfilaes Mar 21st 2009 at 11:20 pm 24
Mark in Boston: That has nothing to do with how IQ has worked for most of the past century; as Wikipedia says, “the scoring of modern IQ tests such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is now based on a projection of the subject’s measured rank on the Gaussian bell curve with a center value (average IQ) of 100, and a standard deviation of 15, although different tests may have different standard deviations.”
Matthew Mar 22nd 2009 at 12:25 am 25
That’s okay, Pros. We can change it. By tomorrow, Wikipedia could say something completely different.
Mark in B. is correct. An i.q. is essentially a wankfest. How exactly can we measure something that we can’t exactly define? (I think that Doc wrote the i.q. test.)
Lord-z Mar 22nd 2009 at 01:05 pm 26
This is a web-comic. It is not especially fun. Its entire foundation is that it has famous characters in unusual situations.