Mynarski Forest Official Vintage Archive

This Week's Strip

#127) "The Wonderful Tar Skippy" September 6, 1999

In looking up examples of foxes in folklore for the EncycVulpedia, I rediscovered Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories about Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, and the conflict between the two characters immediately suggested a Mynarski Forest spoof of "The Wonderful Tar Baby".

What especially appealed to me about the idea was that in the original tale, the two characters were bitter antagonists, and the fox ultimately failed in his goal of deliberately trapping the rabbit. But in this version the two characters are friends, and Liska ironically succeeds in catching Skippy, the absolutely last thing she was hoping to achieve. Thus, the entire story is turned on it's head while showcasing the pair's unorthodox relationship.

This strip again illustrates one of my favourite humor techniques of having a character unwittingly asking a rhetorical in the second last panel, only to have it answered in an unanticipated manner in the punchline. Liska really should have seen this one coming...


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