Last month’s contest featured a cartoon by Nate Fakes, who joined our judging panel. His drawing is set in heaven, where two angels are looking at another angel who’s carrying more than his fair share of halos and wearing a backpack that’s overflowing with them. One of the onlooker angels is addressing the other. Nate did not have a caption for this cartoon so he was humbled by the number of good ideas he saw among the more than 400 entries this contest elicited.
Before I get to the good captions, however, let me address the many awful DEI jokes that alluded to the halo-carrying angel’s dark skin, though I don’t even think he’s supposed to be black. We judges love sick and inappropriate jokes as long as they’re funny, but we draw the line at racist cracks. Jewish jokes, of course, are always fine.
Here were the best morbid entries:
- “There was an accident at the puppy mill.”
- “I hate Plane Crash Tuesdays.”
- “Dude loves a disaster.”
A few people submitted similar jokes about school shootings. That subject is not off-limits if the target of the joke is the NRA or craven politicians who refuse to pass sensible gun-control legislation or people who think the Second Amendment is the best part of the Bill of Rights, but in the context of this cartoon a school-shooting joke crosses the line between funny and cruel.
These entries suggest the angel with all the halos is a serial killer:
- “Ever notice how there are less and less of us here?”
- “That explains all the dead angels.”
That first caption would be better id the word “how” were deleted and the words “less and less” were replaced with “fewer and fewer.” I know I’ll be accused of nitpicking, but improper grammar distracts from an otherwise funny joke. Use the word “fewer” for things you can count, like angels. J.C. Duffy made this rule the point of one of his best cartoons:
Next we have three variations on the same joke. Which do you think is best?
- “He’s very good at poker.”
- “He went to poker night.”
- “Hell of a poker player.”
I preferred the first version because it ends on “poker,” the word that serves as the punch line. Bob Mankoff, however, disagreed. He liked “Hell of a poker player” and said he would have liked that caption even more if it started with the word “Helluva.” Even though Bob wrote the foreward to my book on the caption contest, I now suspect he never read the book, which includes a chapter explaining why one should always avoid colloquialisms like “helluva.”
Speaking of my book, it includes another chapter on the unusual but sometimes successful strategy of focusing on a minor detail in the cartoon, like this caption does: “We can have backpacks?”
This next caption cleverly suggests that all the halos are cheap knock-offs: “It was a good price, but is yours itchy?”
Here is the month’s best pun: “He’s one of the better angels”; the best reference to the cartoonist’s last name; “Only one’s real. The rest are Fakes”; and the best mother-in-law joke: “Damn – everyone tried your mom’s casserole.”
Bob and I did not understand the following entry because we know nothing about video games, but the younger judges convinced us that it’s pretty good: “Oh no, Sonic died?”
This caption is very clever: “You’re from Venus. I’m from Mars. He’s from Saturn.” We especially liked the way it includes references to both a self-help bestseller and the icy and rocky particles orbiting the sixth planet from the Sun, but it’s not that funny.
We liked the idea behind this joke but not the way it’s worded: “Oh, great, he’s building the first divine shower curtain.”
This next entry caused a bizarre theological argument among the judges because Bob and Joel insisted that saints are not angels: “He’s the patron saint of hoarders.”
Here are two versions of the same joke, and the shorter one is superior:
- “In my day, you had to earn them. Now you get them just for participating.”
- “Some of us had to earn ours.”
I like the idea behind this next joke, but it doesn’t actually make sense because greed is still one of the seven cardinal sins in Christian theology: “Sometimes I wish greed was still a sin.”
Here are some better sin-related captions:
- “There should be a thou shalt not something for that.”
- “Can we get kicked out for being envious?”
- “How could I not covet?”
This caption suggests the angels who have only one halo should still count their blessings: “Just be glad we made the cut.”
I love the way this caption makes the reader picture exactly how the angel with so many halos collected all of them: “Don’t ever let him get behind you.”
This caption suggests that the angel with all the halos has put too much faith in humanity: “He’s overestimating how many people will make it here.”
And these captions emphasize the importance of personal connections:
- “He knowns a guy who knows The Guy.”
- “Nepo Angel.”
Finally, here are three entries that explain exactly how one angel came into possession of so many halos:
- “I didn’t know we could negotiate.”
- “It’s his turn to work the door.”
- “Must be a recall.”
My apologies to all of you who submitted ring-toss and ultimate frisbee jokes. They seemed too obvious.
Congratulations to DENNIS PEARL, who submitted the winning caption: “There was an accident at the puppy mill.”
The five runners-up are:
- “Don’t ever let him get behind you.” (Edo Steinberg)
- “That explains all the dead angels.” (Brandon Lawniczak)
- “He knows a guy who knows The Guy.” (Kathy Wrobel-Cornell)
- “It was a good price, but is yours itchy?” (Scott Charles)
- “Hell of a poker player.” (Charles Ingwersen)
If you want to see how we made our selections, we recorded the process and posted on our YouTube Channel.