So, after trying out the Peanuts, I wondered whether it was just a first years syndrome. After all, the Peanuts went on for 50 years. Surely it might just be that the strip only got good after a decade or two went by. I wanted to see if something comparable happened with another strip and tried out Hägar the Horrible. Not really. Sure, artwise the first strips in the complete collection (it’s the German one which is already up to its 15 volume, I think there are only three in the UK at the moment) still look a bit rough, but instead of repeating the Peanuts experience (boredom) I was instantly enthralled.
Not every strip made me chuckle, but I can honestly say that the majority were funny. Some laugh out loud funny, many just very amusing. I went through that collection in a short time and never wanted to stop reading. From the very first strip Hägar was on fire. Sure, it’s an entirely different kind of humor than Peanuts and maybe it’s more suited to my taste. But it’s really not a matter of subtlety. Most jokes in Peanuts really are of the same simple and obvious kind as in Hägar and they still don’t work. Whatever people who like it see in it, it feels to me it’s more something they bring into it than something that’s already there.
Hägar’s source of humor is much more obvious to me. Take a present day family but present them in terms of a fake Viking culture, while retaining the modern sensibilities. And it works. I don’t need to have been a family father to find Hägar’s humor funny. It’s the same with Dilbert. I laughed about the jokes about corporate culture even before I realized that some of those insanities are really based on reality (now that I’m part of corporate culture my laughter sometimes feels pained).
The jokes are rarely truly clever in Hägar, most of the time it’s more like done by the number. But really, as long as they actually make me laugh I don’t really care. Refinement has it’s place, but only after I manage to be amused in the first place. And seeing Hägar near death but happy far away form home, seeing dragons turn away from him because he doesn’t look tasty and healthy in the first place, all these things make me laugh. Even in this first volume entire jokes and themes get repeated occasionally and I expect further volumes in the complete Hägar won’t cover much different ground, but as long as I find them funny it doesn’t matter.
