💬 Will Eisner on Humor vs. Tragedy, from The Comics Journal 47, July 1979
“…I think satire is a form of rage, an expression perhaps of anger. There is kindly humor and there is bitter humor. There’s kindly tragedy and there’s bitter tragedy. There is a relationship between the two in my mind -I can’t keep them separate. Every time I do a very tragic scene, I can see humorous scene within the same frame and it can be converted. A man walking down the street and falling into manhole can be very tragic thing – or it could be very funny. So much depends on what else is involved. I see humor as an incongruity. There are lots of definitions of what humor is- some think it’s man’s inhumanity to man, some think people laugh because they’re glad it isn’t happening to them, some people laugh because of happiness, or kindness, or even fear – but I see humor as a kind of incongruity.”