"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard." - Oscar Wilde

"Tragedy is if I cut my little finger. Comedy is if you fall into an open sewer and die." - Mel Brooks

Eons ago, or so it seems, I was asked to pitch some projects to Marvel Comics' Epic initiative. Forty days and forty nights later I emerged from my dingy studio clutching eight twenty two page scripts, ready to present them to the editorial gods at 10 East 40th, dreaming of fame, fortune and fanboys. Two of the scripts were gangster related projects, three were re-imagined superheroes and one was a spy story but it was the last two scripts that I was most proud of.

The last two were comedies.

Comedy is my life. People don't know this, but I'm a funny guy beneath my black Goth death armor and my Marilyn Manson makeup. When not reading The Poisoner's Handbook for the fiftieth time or dreaming up new characters to rewrite into Sandman when Gaiman finally dubs me the up and coming Neil, I sit in my room and write dick jokes.

Ones with small chickens in them.

Now, what's this got to do with Marvel/Epic (aside from the obvious Giant Sized Man Thing reference that's been translated into eleven different languages by now)? Easy. My editor got back to me several weeks later with the following creed:

"No comedies."

Say what?

It's not just Marvel Comics. Try selling a comedy to DC. Or Dark Horse. Odds are they're going to ask for something dramatic instead. Is the comic book industry that closed to the idea of putting the "funny" in "funny books"? Not at all. Marvel, in the last few years, has put out GLA, She Hulk and Deadpool. DC gives regular work to Gail Simone, Joe Kelly, and Keith Giffen - all writers who bring the funny on a daily basis. Image puts out Hero Camp. Evan Dorkin isn't starving in the streets.

So why the lack of comedy on the comic racks?

Is it because it's easier to write a fight scene than hilarious banter? Is making a reader cry easier than making a reader laugh?

Absolutely.

In my humble opinion, there are only a handful of writers in comics that understand comedy. A select group that have mastered the nuances of creating a specific line of dialogue that will get a reader to stop, choke and spit milk through his nasal passage and out onto the four color pages of Sweatshop. A joke that makes you think twice. Banter IMed to a friend because the writer is so damn proud of the final result after half an hour of constructing it.

The holy grail. The ultimate obstacle.

Effective comedic dialogue.

Don't get me wrong -- every comic book has an element of humor, sure. But not every comic is necessarily funny. See, I believe that comic book writers always try to get in a funny line or two but often confuse "cool dialogue" for "funny dialogue." Books like The Ultimates and The Authority often feature moments that are supposed to make the reader laugh. But when you go back and think about it, lines like "Do you think the 'A' on my helmet stands for France?" are really more "cool" than "funny."

Then I pick up Rick Remender and Kieron Dwyer's Blackheart Billy and see a geriatric Nazi deliver the line "ven next you require 'de chronic' you vill have to fetch it yourself!"

Or I flip through an issue of Dork! and catch a small balloon that reads "Fine... we'll both be Iron Man - modern age and fat age. Sure, whatever."

Or Ambush Bug. Or The Heckler. Or Giffen's Justice League. It's out there. It can be done.

But it isn't easy.

How do you write effective comedic dialogue? How does one, for all intents and purposes, be funny? Well, let's get one thing out of the way and it's going to be hard for all you armchair comedians, internet gunslingers and Peter David to hear, but...

... some people just aren't funny.

It isn't a bad thing. Stephen King makes a very good living being sinister and creepy, as does Rich Johnston. Neither are very funny but that doesn't stop them from writing now, does it? It isn't the end of the world if you can't tell a good monkey joke.

But for the ten percent of you that know what comes in threes and how dialogue can be improved by adding the words "midget", "brains" and "Baldwin", gather 'round and maybe we can show the new kids something.

As a young girl, I often wondered how to make people laugh. It would consume me. I'd toss out fifteen-minute jokes about King Kong's balls at the dinner table and try to end sentences with the words "with sexy results!" Then I met my pal Mo from Canada and we started hanging out together and over time I began to realize that Mo was the funniest guy in any room. Mo was thin and balding and prone to long periods of silence. Mo was usually the last person you noticed at dinner and the first to find a nice, quiet seat from where he could observe everything. And then... halfway between the second and third entrée, Mo would slip out a line that would break up everyone at the table for at least ten minutes. And then he would shut up again.

What was so funny about him? He was clever, he was quick, he was usually pretty amusing but most important was the fact that you never saw him coming.

True comedy sneaks up behind you and grabs your ass. It hides behind corners and mocks straight laced moments from beneath ornate tapestries. Often while throwing pies. You'll never see it coming and the moment you do, all of your literary defenses will be down around your ankles.

A desperate demon standing in the middle of a superhero hospital shouting lines like "THE KINGDOM OF SATAN HAS NO "HEALTH CARE PLAN!" Deadpool asking a miniaturized Rhino whether he'd prefer to be placed in a Fun Ball or Happy Trail, to which the Marvel villain can only respond "...Fun Ball." Deadpool's retort of "LOVE the Fun Ball."

Comedic banter isn't easy - two disparate personalities throwing barbs back and forth, usually over drinks or some kind of romantic debacle. Some writers have invented new and accessible ways of how to write fantastic banter and as a writer interested in crafting comedic dialogue, you should seek them out. David Mamet. Harold Ramis. Aaron Sorkin. Head to the video store and pick up Animal House or the DVD collection of Sports Night. Therein, you'll learn about banter, pacing, timing and how to structure a good joke. You'll learn the value of repetition - especially in Animal House's rush week scene where Tim Matheson utters the line:

"Hi, Eric Stratton. Rush Chairman. Damn glad to meet you."

Which alone isn't all that funny until Peter Riegert follows with "The was Eric Stratton. Rush Chairman. He was damn glad to meet you."

In Sports Night the characters of Dan and Casey lob lines of dialogue back and forth for two minutes, altering the nuances and punctuation so that each time it elevates the meaning and elevates the humor. Belushi's infamous "Was it over when the Germans won Pearl Harbor?" diatribe is filled with wrong way-where the hell did that come from snippets of dialogue. Bill Murray's blase smart bombs in Ghostbusters. Homer Simpson beginning a sentence and switching gears mid-thought to muse about something completely unconnected.

Improvisational comedians suggest the following for on stage scenes: Heighten and Expand. Take a scene, try to push it to another level by introducing new characters and situations, and expand the ways you can push the scene to it's limit. I suggest we can do the same with dialogue. Find a line, push it to another level with an equal or opposite line, then expand the ways you can push the humor to its limit.

Turn a phrase on end. Write, Lather, Repeat. Heighten and Expand.

Hit 'em with something they never saw coming. Like the old joke, remember? "Knock Knock." "Who's there?" "Interrupting Cow." "Interrupting Cow Wh-" "MOOOOO!"

Or the joke that goes like this: Traveling salesman gets stuck in the boonies and ends up on a farmer's front yard. Farmer beckons him in and says, "You can stay here tonight as long as you stay away from my three beautiful sons." The salesman waves his hand and says "Whoa! Hang on! I think I'm in the wrong joke."

Why is that funny? Because you didn't see it coming.

And that's the best starting point a guy can give you as to crafting effective comedic dialogue. Hit 'em with something they're not expecting. Don't let them, as my brother says, see the joke walking down Lincoln Avenue.

Just finished writing my first comedic mini-series, Ursa Minors! for Slave Labor Graphics. It's the story of three twenty-somethings that get their hands on a couple of robotic bear suits and use them to drink beer, pick up women, talk comics and TV and fight the occasional ninja (everything's funnier with ninja, by the way) and it's let me explore the way I tell a joke. It lets me tell lines like:

BEAR TWO: WHAT WAS RICH UP TO LAST NIGHT?

BEAR ONE: WELL, DON'T BE SURPRISED WHEN THE WORDS "FARM ANIMAL" APPEAR ON OUR VISA BILL.

Not to mention:

BEAR TWO: THAT'S ENGLAND FOR YA. COME FOR THE SEX FUNERALS; STAY FOR THE WIZARD BEATINGS.

It's a long way from telling priest and rabbi jokes to my grandmother at Passover, to be sure, and until the book is released, who can say that the dialogue is funny to anyone other myself and my collaborators? But it's a start. It's definitely something no one is expecting. And that's the first step on the road to laughs, kids.

That and constant sex midget jokes, of course.

But like Wilde said, sex midgets are easy. Comedy's hard.

No, wait. That's not right.

Well, at least I got a midget in there.

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BIG POND is a collective column that begins with ideas and continues with opinions. Each column focuses in on my musings about writing for the comic book, film and television industry and then gives way to opinions on the week's topic by a diverse group of writers.

This week, we're joined in the pond by Tom Beland and Dan Taylor, two writers who have been bringing the funny for years now, and by years I mean since before peple figured out that pies plus faces equal giggles. Here are their thoughts on this week's topic:

Tom:"I did stand-up comedy for two years in San Francisco. My first night on stage was at the Holy City Zoo. Now, let me tell you the layout of the HCZ. You have a very tiny stage, with some seats in front of it. There are very few seats in the audience, maybe four rows, 12 across at best.

"Very small audience. But the BAR of the HCZ, that thing stretched out for a mile and was packed. Your audience, usually friends and family, are ready to be polite to you... the bar was ready to kill you instantly. I was very lucky... I stayed on for my first three minutes and the manager gave me the light to keep going and I did a half-hour, improvisational comedy at a very hostile place... and fucking KILLED. Best night ever.

"And that's what comedy is. It's putting on the armor and going to face the lions. Then taming the lions.

"So, if you're going to write comedy for comics... you really have to say something no one else would dare say. It's taking them close to the falls in a barrel, then with a Joker grin, going over the falls... like they weren't expecting.

"Now, I WILL say that those of us (and I have to say us, because I see myself as a comedic/romance writer) who can make the reader read our words and see our pictures and get them to laugh out loud just once... it's the greatest. We got you to laugh. Big laugh, small laugh, hell... even a grin. That is the game we hunt for. And some folks, can't do it.

"It's very tough and takes a ton of practice.

"You can't have the reader seeing the road sign for the joke ahead. I hate the obvious set-up. Ugh. You have to know funny.

"Evan Dorkin knows funny. Gail Simone knows funny. Scott Kurtz knows funny. Brian Bendis' work on New Avengers proves he knows funny. Keith Knight knows funny. Neil knows funny.

"But watching someone try it, who hasn't worked on it... wow. That's tough to watch. You can see a comedian do a serious role and it works. But you can't watch an actor be a comedian. It's a train wreck. Robert Dinero is a fucking horrible comedian.

"Someone laughing at something I've said or written is like putting notches on my gun. Pow.

"Of course, I've probably jinxed myself for life, now that I've told the world how fucking funny I am. Damn."

Dan:"Writing comedic dialog isn't that hard.

"At least it's not as hard as my Johnson. (I wanted to work the dick joke in early, and get it out of the way.)

"The burden of successful comedy writing doesn't rest on the shoulders of the writer alone. The reader has to be open and responsive to humor. If someone doesn't want to laugh odds are they're not going to no matter what you do to them short of tickling their ass with a feather (and, that's been known to piss off a few folks that I've applied that method to).

"But, that's not to say that the writer can just shrug off a reader that is doesn't giggle, guffaw, snicker, or laugh as non-responsive. Humor and laughter is the byproduct of an emotion when you get right down to it - the emotion of happiness. And, emotions work best when there's a connection between two or more people - a relationship. In this case it's writer and reader. The writer has to be open enough to not play it too cautious and throw it out there on the word balloons. The reader has to be open enough as well to be willing to give what the writer has written a worthwhile shot. Like any solid relationship it should be natural. Humor is a two-way street.

"If a reader cracks open one of my titles (one of my titles that is of course meant to be comedic) with a 'just try to make me crack the slightest bit of a smile writer-clown' than odds are I'm going to fail in my attempts at writing comedy dialog. But, give me a reader who's looking for a chuckle and I've already got 'em halfway to the funny farm.

"The reader has to know what they're opening themselves up for in order for the writer to get a fair shake. And on the flip side of the coin - it's the writer's responsibility to respect the title that they're writing on and not just throw in a random fart joke out of the blue. Humor in real life may be very random - that's what makes it funny. Like a fart - when they happen randomly they can be effin' funny. But try to squeeze a fart joke in at an inappropriate time and the results can be mortifying - like shitting your pants.

"So, in conclusion... Humor and/or comedy should be natural - honest and not forced. Like my John... Wait. That doesn't work so good.

"Wait for it...

"Wait for it...

"Okay, now!

"'Like my Johnson.'(Self-effacing humor should come natural to the would-be comic book writer. If we were really thinking about getting the chicks we would've learned how to draw.)

"But then again, what do I know? I've been known to watch episodes of According to Jim and Still Standing."

The column doesn't end there, though - head on over to the The Big Pond forum at the Scryptic Forums and add your opinion to the Pond! Join the collective column and talk writing with myself, this week's contributors and the rest of the Scryptic writers.

My thanks to Tom and Dan for taking the time to teach the world to laugh and cry. Cry tears of joy, that is. Or at least that's what I tell them. Check out their websites and bodies of work if you're having the kind of day that needs a good fish sandwich toss a or a drunken bar brawl.

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Neil Kleid won the Xeric grant for NINETY CANDLES, an experimental graphic novella, and his first graphic novel, BROWNSVILLE, (with artist Jake Allen) debuts from NBM Publishing in 2005. He is currently writing URSA MINORS!, a four issue comedy mini-series for Slave Labor Graphics. A graphic designer by day, Neil harbors notions of writing full time. Weep for him.

Tom Beland is the writer/artist of the comic strip and comic book series, TRUE STORY, SWEAR TO GOD. He lives and works from his home in Puerto Rico, with his fab-o-licious wife, Lily Garcia.

Dan Taylor is the writer and creator of HERO HAPPY HOUR (published by Geekpunk - the critically acclaimed and fan-favorite humor title about superheroes... You guessed it "hanging out in a bar." Dan has also contributed to the debut issue of WESTERN TALES OF TERROR(Hoarse & Buggy Productions) and a couple of issues of DIGITAL WEBBING PRESENTS. Currently he is serving as Editor with IDW Publishing and should be referred to "Mr. Taylor" with your submission pitches (and, don't forget to throw some extra goodies in with that submission - wink, wink).