A Few Comments about Another Comic

𝔄 while back, I opined about Joseph Faill's punning comic on A Pleasant Waste of Time, commenting on the joke upon which the comic depends and, it might well be asserted, killing it in the process of dissection. Even so, I stand by the comments I made then; the point of the comic was to elicit a laugh from a broad audience, and it succeeds at that, although it is lamentable that it has to do so the way it has to do so. We can and should do better.

The comic in question this time around:
Gemma Correll's 5 April 2021 "Serf's Up" on The Nib,
used here for commentary.

A different comic I recently encountered, Gemma Correll's 5 April 2021 "Serf's Up" on The Nib, attested in the caption of the comic I reproduce for the sake of commentary, does appear to do better than Faill. Its situation would seem to circumscribe its audience a bit more than Faill's comic--The Nib has a decided political slant, and it is not one that aligns with as much of academic medievailsm as might be expected (as attested and endured by such folks as Mary Rambaran-Olm, Dorothy Kim, Kavita Mudan Finn, Jonathan Hsy, and Adam Miyashiro; the list is not exhaustive)--and it is perhaps one with that that the comic is able to partake to a greater degree of the usage and visual conventions of the time. The inclusion of what looks like mimicry of an insular majuscule, the ð, and the æ, along with visual cues (hairstyles and some clothing items) and literary references (Chaucer, twice) appear to ground the comic more firmly in the observed medieval than Faill's comic does. In effect, the comic appears to assume a more informed audience and gives that audience more information to make its joke.

That said, the comic gets things wrong in its attempt to make the joke land. The "older" letters, ð and æ, appear to be presented in lowercase or miniscule, inconsistent with the all-caps lettering of the rest of the comic. It might be that the capital forms, Ð and Æ, would not read well in the medium, and a visual medium has to attend to such things; a webcomic does best when it scans easily and quickly, and the lowercase forms do scan quicker than the capitals. So, there might be justification for the seeming error, but it still attracts attention to itself, and that attention distracts from the joke. And there are concerns, as ever, about the flattening and compression of the Middle Ages, as though the several centuries were a constant bloc--but I've spoken to that kind of thing before, and at length, including in materials linked in this commentary.

Even so, the central thrust of the comic--the complaints voiced now are much the same complaints voiced throughout history--is well received. It's true enough; Malory comments aspersively on anticipated lewd interpretations of Lancelot and Guinevere--remarking that "loue that tyme was not as is now adayes"--as well as upon those who sought to cleave to Mordred rather than Arthur, calling that group "newe fangle." His are but two examples, easily found; there are others, all speaking to the theme of "cildas þissum dægum" or somesuch thing. People are people and have been people as long as there have been people; there is no golden age, whether in the pre-Classical or Classical periods, or, maugre the heads of white nationalists, in the medieval; we do well to remember it, and cartoonists such as Correll do well to remind us of it.