Tone Meshing in Practice

For each important feature of the Cerebus transition [G], two comics have been chosen out of the four example comics. One comic has been chosen to help exemplify how to do the element correctly, and one to show how the element can be done poorly or what the pitfalls are. For Tone Meshing, the comic that does this well is Sluggy Freelance [G], and the comic that does it poorly is General Protection Fault [G].

Sluggy Freelance

Sluggy is the master of tone meshing. In its context, it would probably more aptly be called tone weaving. Ever since the comic started to incorporate its more serious elements (sometime around The Affair [G], a storyline that dealt with forbidden love, and later on in its consequences, with betrayal and the loss of love), there have been few storylines that are entirely humorous and arguably none that are entirely dramatic

Take Vampires [G], the conclusion to the storyline began with The Affair. It contains some of the first really serious bits, like Torg [G] being forced to stake Valerie [G], a woman who, despite her being a vampire, Torg is at least partially in love with. It also has riffs on politics, other reasons why light might hurt vampires, and beer as a holy symbol. This comic is a pretty good model for how Sluggy deals with its serious bits. Sometimes things are sad. Sometimes things are serious. But that can get old real fast, so somebody gets needs to get hit with a pie.

Sluggy Freelance works because most of the time you never know whether it's going to be serious or funny on any given day. The world and characters Pete Abrams creates would be impossible without both tones. Torg is silly and good-natured, but he's also been known to pine after Zoe [G], and he often has to make very hard, very un-silly decisions (for those of you who don't read Sluggy, Torg does not, in fact, love Oasis [G]. He's just telling her that so that she'll stay away from Zoe.). Likewise, the world Torg lives in has both Black Ops Christmas Elves and a demon [G] who might destroy the future and who keeps Gwynn [G] trapped in her own mind. Sluggy Freelance does tone meshing right, because it makes the duality integral to the strip, and in doing so creates a more complex whole.

Onwards to discuss GPF