Deus ex comica

See it here.

In some ways you have to admire the steely nerve of Ms. Larson, the artist who brings us The Dinette Set. She comes up with a way in which she wants to poke fun at her characters and then constructs a one-panel world which allows her to execute on the idea. It doesn't matter if the world has to be bent into an unrecognizeable shape. Nothing will get between her and her single-minded pursuit of whatever idea she's gnawing on.

Case in point. In order to enjoy todays joke, we need to accept the following odd suppositions about the ephemeral world in which today's panel is set:

• The DMV has a category called "special case" to which certain drivers are assigned.
• Once designated a "special case" you have to, at minimun, pass a one-on-one test with an instructor.
• You are allowed to have spectators or moral support inside the test room.
• You have to place both traffic cones and traffic signs into the same category: road symbols.
  

It's like Bizarro Seinfeld. It's anti-observational humor in which the artist decides what joke they want to make and then twists reality to suit the joke and hopes you'll follow along. It's Deus ex machina as the basis on which an entire world operates.

And yet, also on display here is one of those things that makes The Dinette Set such an interesting knot to unravel. Mrs. Darwin identifies 6 shapes that appear, is unable to identify a 7th shape, and, for good measure, names an 8th shape that doesn't even appear on the test (the rectangle).

You have to allow for a large probability that it's simply a mistake on the part of the artist; she wrote the dialog but forgot to draw the shape. But there is also some percentage chance that Mrs. Darwin is identifying, as the rectangle, the sign containing the rest of the symbols. There's very little evidence that last interpretation is correct. In fact, given where it is named in the list, I'd say it's more likely I just wish it were the correct interpretation because it would be mildly funny.

But, then, I become as guilty as Mrs Larson of twisting the facts of this panel to suit my desire for it to have an identifiable joke. And perhaps that's the meta-comical point she is trying to make today in an incredibly subtle way. As readers, we engage in the same behavior we critique in her as the artist. We are all guilty of a desire to bend reality to our will in the search for something to make us laugh.

Then again, it's probably just a mistake.

In the anti-Mad Magazine margins (tip of the hat to commenter big bad dog):

• Years of effort by artists to master the art of perspective seem to have been wasted. At least if the drawing of the wall signs, shelf, and Mrs Darwin are evidence.
• I can't identify the third word in the "practical jokes" pamphlet and perhaps that last word would make sense of it all. But, in a general sense, are there a lot of driving-based practical jokes I'm not aware of?