Shack house might stock elves in it
November 17, 2018 2:47 PM   Subscribe

On July 31st, known illustrated jocularity Wondermark (previously) posted an innocuous comic strip beginning with the phrase "Check out my sick elephant!" For the next three and a half months, ending(?) only this past Thursday, every Wondermark strip centered around this one phrase, eventually spiraling into a dramatic(??) storyline with numerous recurring characters—including, yes, several sick elephants. In the eighth strip, wordplay based on slight phonetic variation began appearing, and the phrase was no longer relegated to the first panel; in the last strip, over twenty different variations of increasing obscurity appeared in short succession. In-between is only chaos.

The author, David Malki !, answered questions about the sick elephant saga in this podcast and this recent reddit AMA, including noting that at one point, his readers who wanted more sick elephants outnumbered his readers who wanted fewer by roughly 7:1.
posted by one for the books (23 comments total) 44 users marked this as a favorite
 


See the merino standing there with his long shaggy hair.
posted by hippybear at 3:20 PM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


I love running a joke straight into the ground, this is absolutely delightful!
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:33 PM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm in awe.
posted by edheil at 3:34 PM on November 17, 2018


And yet, Malki! (who several years ago personally assured me that Wondermark's style was absolutely NOT stolen from the illustrations in Trader Joe's flyers, to quote directly, "Trader Who?") has doing additional layers of jocularity, including the easter eggs in the "Chekhov, my elle sycophant" variation, plus in a totally unrelated effort, dedicated his Twitter to recontextualizing the ubiquitous Grinch movie advertising. Here's my fave...
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:39 PM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


well, that was spectacular.
posted by moonmilk at 3:42 PM on November 17, 2018


Man I love the strip usually but have taken to checking if there's an elephant in the panel beforehand reading as it hasn't been for me. Glad I'm in the minority though, but excited to get away from it soon :)
posted by Carillon at 3:43 PM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


Chekov goes even deeper.
posted by hippybear at 3:43 PM on November 17, 2018


I found this classic musical accompaniment worked well with the strip.
posted by homunculus at 3:45 PM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'll bet he never did the Kenosha Kid.
posted by dephlogisticated at 3:53 PM on November 17, 2018 [10 favorites]


From the best-selling author of True Friends Stab You In The Front, previously!
posted by qntm at 3:54 PM on November 17, 2018


Welp, now I know what my wife and I are doing in our pillow fort on Thanksgiving day.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 4:52 PM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


Hippybear,

Back in the nineties, I rushed to a local radio station when I heard that Christopher Cerf was there. I sat in the studio and held up “The World’s Largest Cheese” when he looked out of the sound booth window. A sudden look of shock took his face. After the interview was over, he came out and told me he didn’t believe anyone had that book. I told him it was one of my favorite books from my youth and it took me years to find a copy. He signed it. I was shocked to see you quoting it! Standpipes!
posted by njohnson23 at 4:59 PM on November 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


The Trader Joe’s illustrations are just like or are from a lot of the Dover Pictorial Archive series of books with Victorian and Edwardian illustrations. I think Wondermark uses some of these too.
posted by njohnson23 at 5:03 PM on November 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


njohnson23: I have my copy sitting next to me at this moment because I wanted to make sure it was HIS shaggy hair and not ITS shaggy hair.

It's a monumental book of language play. Amphibious landing craft! Future Pluperfect Tense! Merinos!

I'm amazed at how completely non-existent it is on the interwebs. It seems like it should be a rediscovered darling.

I'm glad you got it. Basically nobody else will. *fistbump*
posted by hippybear at 5:04 PM on November 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


🤛
posted by njohnson23 at 5:37 PM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


Outstanding.
posted by painquale at 5:48 PM on November 17, 2018


Elephino.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:29 PM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Thank you for the new obsession.
posted by bendy at 2:02 AM on November 18, 2018


Ele-fin.

.
posted by eirias at 3:38 AM on November 18, 2018


I love running a joke straight into the ground, this is absolutely delightful!

Into the ground? This one was on its way to China!
posted by tommasz at 5:01 AM on November 18, 2018


It's spreading to other comics - see today's Sam and Fuzzy.
posted by pemberkins at 4:05 AM on November 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


And yesterday's Questionable Content, which I totally missed.
posted by pemberkins at 4:09 AM on November 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


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