Memes and Comics Strips: A Comparative Study

An Undergraduate Dissertation

submitted to

The Department of English

by

Riya Nagendra

17/UELA/066

under guidance from

Ms. Tracy Jose

Research Supervisor
 1

Memes and Comics Strips: A Comparative Study

An Undergraduate Dissertation

submitted to

The Department of English

Stella Maris College (Autonomous)

Chennai 600086

by

Riya Nagendra

17/UELA/066

under guidance from

Ms. Tracy Jose

Research Supervisor
 2

Contents

Certificate 3
Declaration 4
Acknowledgement 5
Abstract 6
Literature Review 7
Dissertation 10
Works Cited 29
 3

Certificate

I certify that this dissertation titled “Memes and Short Comic Strips - A Comparative Study” is the

original work of the student Riya Nagendra of III B.A English, Stella Maris College, Chennai and is

the result of the research conducted by the student under my guidance as a part of the

Undergraduate Research Programme offered by the Department of Research and International

Programmes for extra credits.

Ms. Tracy Jose

Research Supervisor
 4

Declaration

I hereby declare that this dissertation titled “Memes and Short Comic Strips - A Comparative

Study” is my original work. The observations and interpretations in this research paper are the

results of my own reading and understanding of the primary texts, and all secondary sources have

been duly acknowledged.

Riya Nagendra

17/UELA/066
 5

Acknowledgement

I thank the Department of Research and International Programmes of Stella Maris College,

Chennai, for providing undergraduate students with an opportunity for research. I extend my thanks

to the Principal and Management of Stella Maris College for facilitating this Undergraduate

Research Programme to introduce research skills and methodologies to students. I thank Dr. Renuka

Rajaratnam, Dean of Research and International Programmes for conducting sessions to familiarise

students with research techniques. I thank the faculty of the Department of English for their

immense support, in particular Ms. Tracy, my research guide, for motivating me to complete this

project to the best of my ability, and for her constant guidance and inputs on the subject.
 6

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to study the similarities and differences between pictorial digital

memes and comic strips (from single-panel comics to Sunday strips) based on their form and

content. It also seeks to identify the effects of Postmodernism on the two media, and in doing so,

highlights the evolution of the comic strip from the early twentieth century to the present day.

Finally, this paper shows that though memes were largely influenced by the medium of the comic

strip, a convergence of the two can now be seen as they borrow different elements from each other.
 7

Literature Review

The concept of the ‘meme’ was introduced by Richard Dawkins who defined it as a ‘unit of

cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation’—essentially a cultural equivalent of the biological

gene. The word, however, while retaining its intended meaning, is largely used (especially in

popular culture) to describe the various cultural trends and phenomena that arise on the internet;

these phenomena spread, and are adopted and tweaked by millions of internet users—they may take

different forms, including but not limited to, hashtags, patterns in the way people write,

catchphrases and photos. In this paper, the focus will be on the pictorial meme—a type of digital

meme that is comprised of static images (usually) accompanied by text.

Though digital memes are a very recent phenomenon, they have had an incredible impact on

the way people assimilate and react to their experiences—they are now one of the main avenues

through which people express their opinions on political, social and cultural events, and have had an

influence, not just on people’s virtual lives, but their real ones as well—from sparking a trend where

people eat Tide Pods to featuring in multiple political movements across the globe; as ​An Xiao

Mina explores in her book, ​Memes to Movements: How the World’s Most Viral Media is Changing

Social Protest and Power​: ‘Internet memes are one of the newest creative forms, born of digital

culture and in dialogue with offline life, from such daily issues as complaining about a movie or

cheering on sports teams to heavier issues about social justice and human rights’ (Mina 6).

The reach that memes have reflect on one of the medium’s most important features: the way

in which they are created—memes are made and shared by internet users who edit already existing

templates or create their own to be reused and re-shared by others, like a bricolage created in

unspoken collaboration with other internet users. Owing to this, it’s hard to pinpoint the source of
 8
the meme or its original creator,​ and​ memes and meme formats thus tend to be seen as public

property. This is comparable with early forms of literature, especially the oral narration of folktales,

before the practice of writing down texts was common—the original creator was unknown, and

each time the story was retold, the narrator would change the text, tweaking it with their own

elements. This practice is not common in the world of comics, where (especially in recent times,

with the onset of webcomics that are largely self-published and available for free, as opposed to

when being a cartoonist meant being associated with a syndicate) plagiarism is frowned upon, and

those who reshare art on social media without crediting the creator get called out by followers of the

artist. When artists reference others, it is usually done overtly (as an obvious parody or a tribute) or

the original creator is acknowledged (usually through half-serious ‘apologies’ for the mimicry of

their work). The extent to which memes and internet jokes are free to reuse and share is now

changing, however, as popular Instagram accounts such as @fuckjerry face backlash for using

others’ content without crediting them in order to amass followers—especially because they make

large amounts of money from sponsored posts owing to their unfairly gained follower count, while

the comedians who originally came up with the jokes often struggle with their careers.

While the linguistic nuances and the political and socio-cultural impact of the meme are

largely what piques the interest of those who study it, those who study comics tend to focus on the

form (mainly the dual narrative created by the visuals and text), the classification of the different

subgenres of the comic and the evolution of the medium—for example, Will Eisner uses the phrase

‘sequential art’ to describe comics, and Scott McCloud attempts to expand on this definition in his

book ​Understanding Comics,​ which he describes in its introduction as “an examination of the

art-form of comics” (McCloud);such critics also attempt to differentiate between ‘comics’ as an

all-encompassing term, cartoons, comic art, graphic novels, comic strips and so on. In some cases,

single-panel comics are not actually considered ‘comics’ because they don’t fit into the definition of
 9
‘sequential art’; however, in this paper, the medium of the meme is being compared to short comic

strips, as well as single-panel comics due to the fact that their features are very similar and it is

important to include both of them in a study that considers the influence of the comic on the

memetic medium.
 10

Dissertation

Memes and Short Comic Strips - A Comparative Study

Digital memes and comic strips are extremely popular forms of expression and dissent. They

are very similar genres that meld together visual and textual elements for the purpose of

entertainment, education, political and social commentary, and so on; these similarities exist

because of the influence of the comic in the inception of the memetic medium. There are also

differences between the two genres that become evident when one looks at the meme as a

Postmodern medium that evolved (and, indeed, is still evolving) along with the technology that

defines the digital age in which we live. This paper outlines the similarities and differences between

these two genres by considering their acceptance as literature (especially in academic circles, where

a tendency to distinguish between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art still exists), comparing their structures (both

in terms of visual and textual elements), and the variety of content (with a special focus on surreal

and absurd elements that seem almost inherent to certain kinds of memes, and that are becoming

more popular in comics—especially webcomics). This comparison will lead one to understand how

the two genres seem to be converging, as they borrow elements from one another—just as the comic

influenced the creation of the pictorial meme, it is now evolving and adapting itself to the culture of

the present-day, and in turn borrows elements from its evolutionary descendant.

Memes and Comic Strips as Literature

As the classical distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art diminishes even further, there has

been a rise in the amount of respect and academic consideration given to media of expression and

storytelling that might otherwise have been considered mere popular entertainment with no artistic
 11
value of any sort, and thus looked down upon—for example, not just memes or comic strips that are

the object of study in this paper, but other visual media such as movies, music videos, episodic

shows, picture books and so on, are considered worthy of serious study in relation with and within

the field of literature itself.

The prejudice that surrounds these visual media in literary studies still persists, though it is

lessening; the varied attitudes different scholars and critics tend to have towards the inclusion of

such media within the mainstream has to do with the fluid nature of ‘literature’ and the meaning

behind the word. One would assume that being a form of expression, having social value and

containing a strong literary component (captions, dialogues, symbolism, and so on) that works in

tandem with visuals, short comics strips (including the single panel cartoon and Sunday strips) and

memes (pictorial) would be accepted as a part of mainstream literature in the way, for example,

graphic novels (with their exalted label) are. Clearly, it is a question of the traditional separation of

‘high’ art from ‘low’ art, as well as about the complexity of the text, its purpose, ​quality (which, as

much as scholars try to circumvent the fact, is largely subjective), ​and to a large extent its size, that

prevents people from welcoming these media with open arms.

Let us however, for the sake of this paper, consider the short comic strip and the meme to be

forms of literature. There are certain similarities between the media (aside from the idea that they

are not ‘real’ literature—the sarcastic observation made by McCloud that as a child he “read ​real

books, naturally” (2) —indicates that comics are perceived to be frivolous entertainment and have

very little merit; this observation can be extended to encompass memes as well)— these similarities

exist primarily between their forms; however, there seems to be a growing similarity between their

content as well. Comic strips, which saw a rise in popularity in the early twentieth century, could

then have been classified as Modernist texts—their content (at that point in time and for a few
 12
decades hence) can be seen as a reaction to the war, political turmoil and the rapid changes in

society; as a medium of expression, the comic strip was definitely a break from the traditional, just

as the juxtaposition of text and image was in Picasso’s paintings. They have, however, been

gradually evolving into Postmodern texts—something which memes always were.

Comparison of Form

Focusing first on the format of these two media—because it is their form that draws one to

consider a comparison between them—a similarity in form can immediately be observed. Both the

comic strip and the pictorial internet meme can be largely described as visuals within a fixed frame

of either one or more panels, accompanied by text. There are exceptions to this—wordless comics

and memes do exist—but, in the end, the prevalent form seen within the two media is one that

combines images and text. Furthermore, while they both may use more than one panel, neither

memes nor comic strips are very large—to go on for pages is to delve into the territory of larger

forms of sequential art such as zines and comic books. People have attempted to string memes

together to make stories out of them, but each individual meme used is, in the end, a small unit of

not more than a few panels. It is for this reason that it seems more apt to compare memes to comic

strips rather than their longer equivalent—the comic book—where, additionally, panels do not

necessarily have a fixed shape or structure, and their contents may bleed out of the frame of the

panel (see fig. 1). Such methods may occasionally be observed in newer comic strips as in the one

by John Cullen pictured below (see fig. 2), but in comic strips this deviation from the traditional

form is used purposefully—often paralleling a deviation in terms of the content of the strip as well

(in this case, the image of the fold-out bed breaking the walls of the panel highlights the ‘meta’

quality of the strip, and the breaking of the fourth wall). However, the use of such techniques is not

prevalent enough to be considered a normal occurrence, as it is in comic books. Thus, similar to the
 13
comic strip, the encapsulation (capturing of prime moments within the panel) in memes is done

within fixed panels.

Fig. 1. A spread that doesn't have a fixed structure, the way comic strips tend to, from:

Sacco, Joe. ​Palestine,​ Jonathan Cape, 2003, pp.4-5.

 14

Fig. 2. An example of an outlier, in this strip by John Cullen, the contents bleed outside the

panel, from: @nellucnhoj. “break.”​ Instagram​, 17 Jul. 2019,

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0BhyvHoune/?igshid=hl42pbh0zkhq​.

Textual Elements

There are textual elements present in both memes and comic strips—captions, dialogue and

labels. In memes, objects may be given labels (as in the popular “Is this a pigeon?” meme), and

captions may be used to explain the visuals (for example, “that feeling when…” or “my reaction

when…” are popular captions used to explain accompanying images). The use of captions is quite

common in single-panel comics as well, as seen in the example from Dan Piraro’s ​Bizarro​ given

below (see fig. 3); captions are important tools that add to the humour of the visuals (which may or

may not already be humorous in themselves).

 15

Fig. 3. How captions are used in single panel comics from: Piraro, Dan; “​Pirates”​ ; Dan

Piraro; bizarro.com, 29 Jul. 2006, ​https://www.bizarro.com/pirates​.

Dialogues are another important textual element, especially in the comic strip—previously, it was

the main narrative tool used in multi-panel strips, and helped take the story forward; as the form

evolved, captions became a part of multi-panel strips as well and they are often used as the main

text accompanying the visuals and telling a story. There are other text-based features used in

comics, such as when a character is writing a letter and the written text is shown above the character

where speech bubbles may usually be positioned, or intra-iconic text (to borrow a term from the

realm of children’s literature)—background text that does not affect the main plot of the comic

strip, but adds to the setting and, in many cases, contains a separate joke; these elements are rarely

present in memes as they are, essentially, story-telling tools—memes tend to represent situations

and reactions to these situations, they do not have a narrative in the way (multi-panelled) comic

strips do. To call a meme a ‘story’ would be like considering a ‘walk into a bar’ joke a story. In this

sense, memes (even those that have more than one panel) resemble single-panel comics more than

they do multi-panel comics.

 16

Like these peripheral textual elements, the type (or font) itself can play an important role in

communicating the desired message or emotion—the size, degree of emboldening, stylising (for

example, using a type where the characters appear to be covered in slime in a horror-themed comic

strip), and spacing (kerning) can change how a textual message is perceived. The dialogue of a

person urgently crying for help in a comic strip might be large and emboldened to a great degree;

disorientation in a meme might be expressed by increasing the kerning, or mockery might be

expressed by random capitalisation (as in the popular ‘Mocking SpongeBob’ meme). In some cases,

the type carries meaning in itself—for example, Comic Sans is an infamously childish font that is

the brunt of multiple jokes; it carries with it an impression that the person who uses it has bad taste,

and is often used ironically.

Illustrations and Photographs

Another key point of comparison between the two media is the nature of the visuals. Comic

strips are, almost all of the time, illustrated, but cartoonists have used photographs innovatively in

their strips, as Bill Amend did in the very first ​FoxTrot​ strip published (see fig. 4). Conversely,

while memes are largely constructed by adding text to photographs, they are now quite as often

made using illustrations.

 17

Fig. 4. Photographs used innovatively in the comic strip from: Amend, Bill. ​FoxTrot: The

Works,​ Andrews McMeel Publishing LLC, 1990, 8.

However, the difference here is that while cartoonists illustrate their own content, the

illustrations used in memes are often taken from an already existing comic strip (for example, two

panels from the ​Perry Bible Fellowship’​ s comic ‘Quiz Kid’ have been used to create a meme

template)—which is, essentially, how memes work—a format arises, is circulated, reused, and both

the text and visuals may be edited by the multitude of meme-makers who inhabit the World Wide

Web. This phenomenon highlights the Postmodern nature of the meme—creators give and take

freely, with one meme being referenced by another and memes being juxtaposed, it is a prime
 18
example of intertextuality. We also realise that the meme and comic formats are becoming

somewhat interchangeable, in the sense that they are borrowing from each other and building from

each other—not just with the meme borrowing templates from already existing comic strips, but

comic strips being drawn to mimic memes such as in the example pictured below where ​the

cartoonist, Adam Ellis has illustrated a comic strip with his own comic persona in the 'Neo dodging

bullets' meme (see fig. 5)​.

Fig. 5. ​Adam Ellis's cartoon revisioning of the 'Neo dodging bullets' meme, from: @adamtots. “Not

today!.”​ Instagram,​ 17 May 2018,

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxOGmaMhQFk/?igshid=1gcz8ibfxnzyo​.

The osculation of these two media results in a variety of different meme-comic hybrids,

where the key elements of both (the fixed template and the fresh illustrations) are blended in

different ways. There are instances where a template is created, and is followed by cartoonists—an
 19
illustrated meme that each artist draws themselves, following the template, while also adding their

own flavour to it; for example, the comic by Adam Ellis shown below is one of the kind that

follows a two-panel template that is frequently used to showcase ​differences​—expectation versus

reality, then versus now, me versus other people, and so on (see fig. 6).

Fig. 6. The two-panel template that highlights the differences between two situations, from:

@adamtots. “WAH.”​ Instagram,​ 6 Nov. 2017,

https://www.instagram.com/p/BbKZMh8gnvW/?igshid=12nzoccr6pnyt​.

Another recent phenomenon is the creation of challenges among groups of independent

artists who primarily post their work on social media—for example, as a 2019 April Fools gag,

popular cartoonists made comic strips where their characters had hyper-realistic eyes; in many

cases, the characters of these strips revealing these (unusually) realistically-drawn eyes was the

punchline of the strip. The comics were accompanied by the hashtag ‘EyeAmTheFool’, which

appears to be a reference to a similar gag pulled by artists online in 2016. These gags are also a kind
 20
of pictorial meme.

Interestingly, what social media users speculate might have been the ‘first meme’ was a

meme-comic hybrid that follows the same template and was published by the University of Iowa in

a 1921 edition of their satirical magazine ​The Judge.​ Another popular example would be Le Rage

Comics, which are essentially comic strips, but the art style and expressions of each character

follow a template and are unchanging, as is the narrative style; only the specific situations shown in

each strip vary.

Thus, while in most cases memes can be differentiated from comic strips in terms of their

form, there are quite a few instances in which the two media overlap—the same can be said of their

content as well.

Comparison of Content

Humour is a central theme in both comic strips and memes—there are, as always,

exceptions, especially in the case of comic strips, which have a more expansive history than memes.

Rodolphe Töpffer is considered the Father of the Comic Strip, and it is after the publication of ​The

Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck​ (a translation of his ​Les Amours de Monsieur Vieux Bois)​ in 1842,

that the era of the modern comic strip begins—it was around this point in time that the comic strip

began to mature into what we see today; earlier comic strips were very different (mostly in terms of

content). The history of sequential art can be traced back centuries, however, according to David

Kunzle, if the comic strip is to be considered a mass medium, then its inception could not have been

before that of the printing press; there was, around the fifteenth century, an artform that resembled

what we now refer to as ‘comic strips’ whose ​main​ purpose was not necessarily to be humorous or
 21
satirical, but to spread propaganda and teach morality. Of course, comic strips are used for these

purposes even in the present day, but there is usually an element of lightness or humour attached, a

hangover from the modern era of comics.

Evolution of Humour

Postmodernism has had its effect on both memes and comic strips, influencing the way

humour is used. There are comic strips that don’t necessarily strive for hilarity, but consist of more

serious, macabre or melancholy themes (for example, Fran Krause’s ​Deep Dark Fears)​ , but again,

these are not as common as those comics that seek to amuse; however, their existence signals that

comics are once again branching out, and shaking the image of being purely humorous. Essentially,

a shift in the nature of comics over time can be seen—from being just tools of visual

communication to being a medium that predominantly works with humour, once again moving

towards being largely narrative tools, but not entirely losing its humorous quality. To always label

them ‘comic’ strips may be a misnomer, but it’s important to acknowledge the large role that the

comic element plays. In the case of the meme, however, humour seems to be a constant in its

relatively short history. Memes are purely Postmodern, unlike the comic strip, and the way

emotions are dealt with is evidence of this. While comic strips shed the tradition of always being

funny, and start to portray a variety of emotions without the veil of humour, memes do the

opposite—instead of dealing with sadness (for example) in a melancholy way, they embrace the

humorous veil while simultaneously acknowledging the existence of these crushing emotions—they

are a form of humorous dramatic existentialism.

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Variety within the media

Viewing these two media as instruments of humour, the difference in style of humour must

immediately be acknowledged. Let us consider three different kinds of comic strips, each very

different: first, the traditional kind that was prevalent throughout the twentieth century that largely

catered to the family audience; second, surreal comics; lastly, ‘relatable’ webcomics. Each of these

relate to the meme differently.

The first kind of comic strip was prevalent in America in the twentieth century (although it

is said to have originated in the late eighteenth century with ​The Yellow Kid​), and was published

mainly in newspapers and magazines, largely in order to improve sales. The medium evolved into

adventure strips (that were larger and told a story), satirical comics (for example, Dr. Seuss’s

cartoons about World War II) and strips centred around everyday life (such as Blondie, Peanuts,

Nancy, Foxtrot and so on)—of which the latter two contain elements similar to those in memes.

Memes contain a large amount of political satire—they are used to make a mockery of

governments, politicians, policies and so on, not just in terms of the captions added, but by using

photos of politicians as the base of the memes—for example, the meme pictured below uses photos

of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, with a caption that is completely unrelated to politics but at the

same time seems to comment on their political relationship (see fig. 7). Memes are also social satire,

almost by virtue of their existence—they are tools used by those who create them to make fun of the

quirks of society, but also of the creators themselves. There is a sense of ‘I’ present in memes that

makes them different from these earlier comics. Even in the comics that depict everyday situations

centred around family and/or work, the humour is centred around other characters, in whom one

may perhaps see themself or their own situation in life reflected. There is an element of relatability
 23
in both media, but one is centred around the sense of self, while the other is embodied in the

familiarity of the depicted characters.

Fig. 7. A meme that uses pictures of politicians as the base of a joke revolving around everyday

issues, from: @​buzzfeedindia. “paad marey oh ladka paad marey”​ Instagram​, 17 Apr.2019,

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwW7vZvHjzv/?igshid=1jiudf21m6kfn​.

It is this same sense of self that makes the meme so similar to the webcomics of

today—both seem to consciously and purposely aim to be relatable to the modern audience. Perhaps

this is an illusion created by the intimacy between the artist of the webcomic and their

audience—their lives are depicted in their comics, their characters are self-insertions and the

modern audience can verify this, as they often get to see snippets of the artist’s life, on the same

platform on which the art is posted—social media; Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and so on

allow the artist to post pictures, videos, or text posts that give their fans a more intimate knowledge

of their lives—their workspace, art making process, family, events, mental health, opinions on a
 24
variety of issues, and so on. Webcomic artists, being self-published, tend to promote themselves this

way—by becoming small-time celebrities of a new generation that sees the artist as a reflection of

themselves, rather than as just a name in the margin of the panels.

The Surreal Element

The presence of the surreal can be observed in both media. Surreal comics were not as

prevalent at the beginning of the modern era of comics as they are now—the genre of webcomics

has taken ironic and surreal humour to a different level; this evolution can be seen as similar to the

evolution from classical art to modern art, where artists began to experiment with the surreal—only

in this case, the ‘classical’ period of comics was the time from its inception as a popular artform to a

few decades later, when the influence of new ideas and a new way of looking at the world pushed

cartoonists to experiment. The results of this can largely be seen in webcomics such as those created

by John Cullen and Hayden Myers.

There have been surreal set-ups in the more traditional comics, such as in ​Peanuts​, where

the rationality of Snoopy’s relationship with the rest of the world is never questioned, and neither

are his various adventures—he is sentient and extraordinarily witty, but also still a dog with canine

sensibilities, and Schulz taps the strange oscillation between these two characteristics to create

absurd situations that the reader just goes along with; this set-up is different from that seen in strips

that are entirely composed of sentient animals, or animals who only speak to each other (​Mutts​, for

example), or where the sentient nature of these animals is consistently acknowledged by the

surrounding world (as in ​Get Fuzzy​ or ​Garfield​)—the absurdity of Snoopy’s character arises from

the oscillation between two perspectives of his personality. Likewise, modern cartoonists use

surreal elements to parody, mock and give their comic strips an Existential element. These kinds of
 25
comics may or may not be explicitly comedic—rather, amusing by virtue of their absurdity, or

because of their parodic nature.

The presence of the surreal in both memes and comics is emphasised by the visuals—the

unusual captions or dialogues (oftentimes carefully crafted misspellings) are compounded by

images that have a lot of image noise, are composed of eerie colour schemes, or heavily edited

photos; this editing may make the reader uncomfortable, or amused at the ridiculousness of the

picture. Deep fried memes are a prime example of this, where multiple filters, especially those that

are ‘noisy’, are used; these create both a jarring effect, and a sense of mockery—they are, on some

level, memes that are parodying meme culture itself. The aforementioned visual techniques are also

used in comic strips to create the same effect—for example, John Cullen’s parody strips (of a

variety of pop-culture favourites such as Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog and ​The Simpsons​) usually

contain eerie colour schemes, grotesque and explicit images (see fig. 8); Adam Ellis’s comic strip

parodying ​Peanuts​ has similar elements as well (see fig. 9).

 26
Fig. 8. John Cullen’s bizarre ​The Simpsons​ Parody Strip, from: Cullen, John; “​From the

Archives: the smipnoss”​ ; John Cullen; nellucnhoj.com, 22 Dec. 2017,

https://nellucnhoj.com/post/168825007959/from-the-archives-the-smipnoss-tumblr-twitter

Fig. 9. Neon colours, strange concepts and twisted names are used in Adam Ellis’s surreal parody of

Peanuts, from: @​adamtots. “Soon……. .”​ Instagram,​ 20 Oct. 2018,

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpISR9ElnIA/?igshid=1u7v392bo90tt​.

There are memes that are explicitly given the label of ‘surreal memes’ or ‘dank memes’, that

include recurring characters such as a talking head sometimes referred to as ‘Meme Man’, and text

that would make no sense to anyone unfamiliar with meme culture; these memes are deliberately

ironic. In addition to this, there are also those memes whose hilarity is borne of pure silliness, such

as the meme featuring an edited photo of famous chef, Gordon Ramsay, with the caption ‘Sosig’
 27
(see fig. 10)—it does not quite fit into the category of those labelled surreal memes by netizens, but

the sheer lack of meaning or structure indicates an absurd element—a gateway, perhaps, to the

surreal meme.

Fig. 10. The absurd ‘Sosig’ meme, from: “Sosig - Sosig OG.” ​Know Your Meme,​ Literally

Media Ltd., ​https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1153932-sosig​.

Bizarreness and comic irony are, largely, inherent to the meme—a multitude of memes are

unfathomable to people who are not familiar with internet culture, and in many cases it is the surreal

nature of the meme that makes it so. The comic strip is a more lucid medium, that appeals to a

wider audience; memes are relatable, but only to those who keep up with them. Of course, not every

meme is inscrutable—there are those that can be shared with not-so internet literate acquaintances

without receiving a barrage of confused questions in response—but the nuances (especially of the

more ‘dank’ memes) are better understood by those who follow the rise and fall of the meme

economy.
 28

Convergence of the media

Comic strips have a longer and more varied history than memes, whose inception began

after that of the digital age. There are differences, but the multiple features that the two forms

share—such as their panel structure, textual features (like dialogues, captions and labels), the

element of humour and so on—seem to hint that the meme is a Postmodern, digital offspring of the

comic strip. Furthermore, a convergence of the two media can be observed in the present day, as the

comic strip adapts to the age—just as the meme borrowed multiple components from its ancestor,

the comic strip in turn is adopting Postmodern qualities of self-reflexivity, intertextuality (with

many cartoonists offering up comic templates for memes), and so on, and branches out into new

literary spaces, oftentimes resembling the meme.

 29

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