Humour, Onion-Style

I stumbled across this "Ask Golden Age Wonder Woman" blog post, in which "Dear Abby" type letters are answered by the use of bondage-related panels from 1940s Wonder Woman stories. It's not hard to see where that sort of idea comes from.

After all, the comedy to be found at the above link is obviously inspired by the type of thing that shows up on The Onion every once in a while. There, they'll do something like "Ask A High School Student Who Didn't Do The Required Reading". In both cases, the premise is simple (and certainly humourous, in principle): Take seemingly-real advice column questions, such as "What should I do if I catch my husband cheating on me?" and provide ridiculous answers in the form of some pre-canned and generally unrelated material.

The trick to making it pay off as more than just a one-trick pony, though, comes in the 'matching' of the responses to the questions. Actually addressing the query isn't the point - that would be more like a 'legitimate' advice column, after all, and where's the humour in that? - but rather the striking of the appropriately absurd note between the two. I'd say that that mark is missed more often than hit, and yet I still can't help but stop to read these whenever I encounter one. I do manage to derive some odd entertainment for them, even when they're just silly. But I'd love to see one that's truly done well!