The Little Nun from McSweeney’s 13th

I agree that these comics seem to share a poignant, somber quality that allows them to mock and mimic life in various ways.  My main topic, however, shifts to a study of a single series of comics entitled The Little Nun due to its use of presentation of moral dilemma and humor.

F.W. Seward Jr writes: “never should the cartoonist be satisfied to be merely funny.”  A proper humorist does not act a fool just to be foolish, but to display a certain point, or to display the truth about life through the pain and suffering of the real world.  The Little Nun’s main character is a very geometric, black hooded nun who simply seems to observe and pray while the world around her progresses into cruelty, misdemeanor, and death.  The injection of childish character designs into an adult and somber setting provides a great juxtaposition which highlights the reality of human nature.

One of the comic strips contains a sequence in which a boy builds a snowman only to violently destroy it at the end.  The humor always comes in the last panel when the nun puts her hands together to pray, decrying an immoral act worthy of penance.  The wrongdoing in this strip, face-value, would be a boisterous child who cannot contain his rage.  When delving into this topic from the view of what the humorist is trying to say, one can gather that this is a comic about human morality– humans committing needless violence, people taking time to build things only to destroy them in the end.  In another comic strip, a snowman slowly melts away as the nun approaches from a distance.  Studying it face value, the nun is merely praying over the death of a snowman, cute, but not overbearing.  Again, the humorist’s approach states that this is much more than a snowman, but about the impermanence of life.

Another interesting panel is one in which two clowns throw pies at each others face, only to realize that they have defeated themselves and have not garnered a laugh from an audience as the little nun starts a vigil right next to the scene.  I believe the author is referencing the notion that humor isn’t about being a clown, but about being able to notice the problems in life and have the guts to express dissatisfaction or disapproval.  Humor is about approaching a threshold between negative emotions, such as pain, sadness, embarrassment, and reporting them under the guise of a story.

The most striking strip is one in which the little nun commits suicide (with a gun–which is humorous since nuns and guns are not objects associated very closely) in order to water a wilting plant with her blood.  The extreme means that the little nun goes through in order to preserve life also ends up mocking what lengths people will go through in order to display a point or to protect something of little or no value.  Or perhaps the nun, after experiencing the violent and turbulent state of the world sees a wilting flower, and instead of simply holding a prayer for its death, decides to act upon her desire to preserve life rather than be a static observer.  Whatever the case may be, the flower ends up flourishing, and I end up being drawn into the comics dark and somber tone.