Some cartoonists need several panels to build toward a punchline, but Joe Lennon has long proved that one can be more than enough. Through Lennon's cartoons, everything from everyday frustrations and familiar sayings to animals, superheroes, and pop culture is turned into compact jokes that often take an unexpected turn. We’ve featured Lennon’s work quite a few times on Bored Panda over the years, including in our recent collections of his single-panel cartoons. If you enjoyed those, there are plenty more clever and wonderfully odd ideas waiting below.
A big part of the appeal is how simple his jokes are, both the dialogue-based and the visual ones. His cartoons mix wordplay, visual gags, strange misunderstandings, and absurd scenarios, often starting with something completely recognizable before steering it in a much less predictable direction. The result is the kind of humor that can make an ordinary situation suddenly seem much stranger than it did a moment ago. Lennon also recently released “The Best of Lennon Cartoons: A Joe Lennon Collection,” bringing together more than 200 cartoons from the past decade in both black and white and color. Readers who want to explore even more of his work can check out the book.
Scroll down for our latest selection, upvote the cartoons that made you laugh the most, and let us know your favorites in the comments.
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I ordered rabbit at a restaurant. My wife wanted some of it, but that would be splitting hares
"Found it on an island when I was a spacecraft test pilot. Why do you ask?"
If you pick up a woman on the beach and put them to your ear you'll hear frantic screaming.
Guess they're finally addressing the elephant in the room.
All 6 parts All 6 parts in this series
It's funny how you can often make a pretty accurate guess as to the generation of a cartoonist by their cultural references. I suspected that this guy was in the 65-75 year old range, and sure enough he seems to have been born in the 50's or early 60's (exact DOB not listed, but his profiles often say that he "started drawing as a kid in the 1960's). MIND YOU, there's nothing *wrong* with his age or his pop culture references; as a Gen X'er, I was able to fully appreciate them, but I did often find myself thinking "this joke must totally baffle a lot of younger readers". (Of course, *some* older cartoonists are more prone to continuing to use really séxist or otherwise dubious humor that was once commonplace and widely "appreciated", or at least accepted as "normal", but is now understood to have always been more-or-less hurtful and offensive to the targets. But this guy isn't terrible egregious about it.)
My exact thought when I saw the one with "Tie a yellow ribbon".
Load More Replies...Nice ones! it contrast with the censorship on PB for whatever word, and then you see a politically incorrect strip xD
It's funny how you can often make a pretty accurate guess as to the generation of a cartoonist by their cultural references. I suspected that this guy was in the 65-75 year old range, and sure enough he seems to have been born in the 50's or early 60's (exact DOB not listed, but his profiles often say that he "started drawing as a kid in the 1960's). MIND YOU, there's nothing *wrong* with his age or his pop culture references; as a Gen X'er, I was able to fully appreciate them, but I did often find myself thinking "this joke must totally baffle a lot of younger readers". (Of course, *some* older cartoonists are more prone to continuing to use really séxist or otherwise dubious humor that was once commonplace and widely "appreciated", or at least accepted as "normal", but is now understood to have always been more-or-less hurtful and offensive to the targets. But this guy isn't terrible egregious about it.)
My exact thought when I saw the one with "Tie a yellow ribbon".
Load More Replies...Nice ones! it contrast with the censorship on PB for whatever word, and then you see a politically incorrect strip xD
