Internet comedy is the best
Who needs to stay up for SNL anymore?
The year was 2005 (or 2006). I was in my first year of law school, when I came across a link to a site called “YouTube.” The link was to an SNL “digital short” that had recently aired during a recent episode I had missed. Fortunately, someone had uploaded this short1 (which I didn’t even realize was a thing) onto this weird site, and after watching it, I immediately sent it to all my friends. Apparently I wasn’t the only one, as the short went viral, and may have helped lead to YouTube’s billion-dollar acquisition by Google a few years later.
The video led to my renewed interest in watching SNL, and they delivered some excellent shorts that year, including another classic, Young Chuck Norris.
The success of these shorts on YouTube led to others dipping their toes in the digital waters and set off an unprecdented comedy renaissance.2 YouTube erased the gate-keeping of having to move to Chicago to earn a spot in Second City or trying to get 90 seconds of set time at a dozen comedy clubs each week. You could just make a funny video, upload it on the platform, and voila, instant comedy success!
Well, not really. The great thing about an open platform is that everyone can use it and the bad thing about an open platform is that everyone can use it. There are nuggets of gold on YouTube and there is also a lot of bad stuff out there. With the deluge of content now at our fingertips, we’ve become reliant on complicated algorithms to mine through the volume.
Fortunately, I am here to share with you some of my favorite comedy shorts that I recently discovered (and one oldie-but-goodie).
The YouTube algorithm randomly served me this video from Mikey & Wyatt about a year ago, which was coincidentally the sketch that caused their comedy channel to explode. Mikey appears in most of the videos (there’s a multi-video storyline about the doomed Friendzone “romance” between Mikey and Claire), but Wyatt remains shrouded in mystery.
Julia DiCesare alternates between NYC-focused parody sketches and video diaries chronicling her stand-up comedy and creative journey.
A relatively new discovery is Will Dennis, with frequent co-star Ellie Sachs. Some feature just a single shot from a distance of the two of them walking on the street.
Outside of the sketch genre (and I am months late to this), but Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Date is insanely funny:
Finally, one of the sites I checked out daily when I was first out of law school was College Humor (which is still around but now called Dropout). Here is one of my favorite sketches:
Enjoy the above videos while you hide from your friends this weekend or during a long train ride.
Here’s a rundown of my creative workweek that was!
Secret Sauce / CloakRoom Kickstarter campaign
Final reminder that the Kickstarter for The CloakRoom issue 4, which includes my new cozy fantasy story Secret Sauce, has only a few days left! Back the campaign here and get 5 stories along with 3 back issues for over 450 pages of comics!
I also appeared on the latest episode of the TLDR Comic Book Club podcast with the editors and other writers of The CloakRoom to talk about Secret Sauce, sharing a last name with legendary basketball coach Red Auerbach, and more! Listen here.
Blood of Atlantis
The holo trading card is finished, and the Beatrice chibi pin now has its cool backing card. Take a look!
Also Fran Delgado was recently at Phoenix Fan Fusion, where she met up with BoA variant cover artist, Laura Braga!
Reminder that you can still pre-order Blood of Atlantis issue 2 through our BackerKit pre-order store to snag your copy ahead of the fall retail release!
NYC Questing Guild
I am still stuck on chapter 25 of The Gauntlet, which has no joke probably taken me more than a month at this point. And I know I will need to go back and tinker with it afterward to hit the thematic points I want to convey. It’s not the climax of the story, but it ties up some emotional arcs for three of the characters, and so I need to get it right.
On the plus side, if I end doing doing some interior illustrations as part of the Kickstarter, there is a scene in this chapter that is definitely worthy of an illustration.
Stuff I read this week
A lighter week of reading this past week.
Like Brothers, by the Duplass Brothers - part memoir, part Hollywood how-to from the Duplass Brothers, independent film makers and actors (as least Mark is). Mark was recently on The Town to talk about how to make your own TV show and get Netflix to buy it. Definitely worth a listen.
Assorted comics
I am still making my way through the March comic releases, although I capped off one series with the last issue of Welcome to the Maynard, which is a super fun story about a bellhop/house detective in training at a hotel that serves magical guests. It dovetails nicely with the tone of Secret Sauce. And I’m also enjoying The Rocketfellers, although the back matter might have purposefully spoiled a big plot point? We’ll find out in issue 5.
I also reach Beach WZRD #1, which is a comedy series about a newly appointed small town Witch encountering the natural disaster known as a “Wizard.” Definitely worth a read!
Do you have a favorite Internet comedy series?
Sound off in the comments!
NBC at some point got the original video taken down from YouTube and uploaded their own version of Lazy Sunday. Another piece of Internet history ruined by big corporations and copyright!
This feels accurate, but I don’t have the time to research and write a 10,000 word article about this subject right now.