Fucking Day: Hustler Humor

"I just had to pass some gas," says a man farting out a window. Hi, I'm Seanbaby, and that was an entire Hustler Humor comic.

Hustler Humor was first published in 1978 and ran for an astonishing 41 years. It was mostly single panel cartoons, and it was miserable. It seemed based more around the idea of "anything goes" than funny. It was pornography, sometimes, but not for horny people. In fact, I think I've identified the exact five type of people this magazine was for:

A. Terrible Racists. When you tell a cartoonist "there are no rules," the first thing they think is, "the fuck there isn't-- Whites Only."

B. Maniacs Unshackled from the Restraints of Reality and Sense. Some of the cartoons are, probably by accident, sort of awesome in a way you can't replicate with a normal, functioning creative process.

C. Confused Men Unsure of How They Got Here. "What is a pun, also maybe fart?" This is the most common question asked by a Hustler Humor cartoonist.

D. Cranky Virgins. Admittedly, there are a lot of holes down there and not all of them self-lubricate. You can't expect every guy drawing boner comics to know how things work.

E. Murderers. And those who eat the flesh of Man.

Let's get started! We'll begin the same way our great nation did: racism.

This is... holy fucking shit, this is racist to the bone. This cartoonist isn't commenting on any stereotypes or cultural differences. He thinks it's the pigments that are funny. This is how you would teach racism to a child too slow for normal home school classes. I was so stunned by this Platonic ideal of bigotry I googled the guy's name, and you will not be shocked by the first result:

This was a bad start. On the first try I found a man too racist for crypto. Let's try a fun one. Here's one for a Type B personality, which in this case is a Maniac Unshackled from the Restraints of Reality and Sense.

It's eight naked elderly women surfing after a shark to fuck it. "That's it, Mildred! Fuck him before he gets a chance to dive!" one of them says, because fucking a shark is their mission, or at least suddenly became their mission. Why are they in cowboy boots? Why any of it? It's like someone drew a weird dream, held a nationwide caption contest, and picked the least coherent one. It's right on the nose, yet makes no sense, and I love it. You can't create this when you know what you're doing. I think maybe a shark wrote it?

One wrong step away from Type B is Type C: Confused Men Unsure of How they Got Here. Here's an example of that:

This is trash. This is an inadequate mind working backwards from "fish smell" and creating nothing. Going through all this, a man is cheating on his wife at a brothel and his cover story is going to be FISHING. Only instead of fishing equipment or fish, he's going to bring home a swampy shirt? It's this long walk through a broken dream just to get back to the artist's original concept: the crotches of the unwashed. As a work of pornography comedy, it is neither of those things. Did a shark write this one too? Because this is like all the misogynies as understood by a shark.

Now let's look at an example of a Type D comic-- the ones for cranky virgins.

I honestly don't know if this is a plastic surgery joke or if this cartoonist would give just about anything for a jar of Cher's toenails. Let's do another one in case this is my misunderstanding and it's actually a hilarious pop culture reference for real sex havers.

Okay, so we have a man and a woman trapped on desert islands together. It's the perfect setup for a racy joke. How will the sexual dynamics of men and women play out in these outrageous circumstances? The man holds up four fish and says, "Toss me a pair of soiled panties, and the whole string is yours."

It is a catastrophe. The idea of panties being a sexual conquest. The word "soiled." And there's no turn or twist-- he's a lonely pervert in a magazine for lonely perverts. And he seems to be making reference to multiple pairs of panties, a thing rendered impossible by the basic premise. Is "GIVE ME THE STINK OF YOUR SEX GLANDS OR STARVE," meant to be funny because it could have been so much worse? This isn't a human experience. This is how sharks think capitalism wor-- oh my god, a shark wrote this one too.

The last category of Hustler Humor Personality Type is murderer. Let's take a look!

What the fuck is this? The premise is "what if bear traps hurt bears" and the punchline is "first draft nickname." These are characters you'd put in a movie so the audience would cheer for a forest fire. It's the perfect Pictionary drawing of Psychopathy. Was there a publishing error? Was it supposed to say, like, "REAGANOMICS" over their heads, or are these men really just enjoying a nice afternoon of animal suffering? If you saw this cartoon on someone's refrigerator you'd say, "Oh no, oh fuck, a shark lives here."

Let's do another round starting with Type A: Racist. This might be a mistake!

I don't know why or how, but I am 90% sure this is a hate crime. Maybe it's only because I now know "Trosley" as "Famously Racist Cartoonist Trosley." Is the joke how white people don't use rat shit on snowmen? Because if that's the joke, I don't get it, and in a violent way. What I mean is, if you handed this to me I would not be sure why I'm putting my fist through your head, but I would be. It's possible I'm being crazy and this has nothing to do with bigotry, so let's try another one-- a Racist Redo.

Okay, Jesus fuck, it was definitely racist. Where did this rat turd thing come from? Is it regional? This is racism I've never heard of, and I was edgy in the '90s. I feel like I need to go to Trosley's home and introduce a black prom date to his step dad to understand racism this specific. Let's do another Type B: Maniac Unshackled from the Restraints of Reality and Sense.

Oh hell yeah, look at this one. "Fuck you, here's your coffee, fuck you!" says probably a wife for no reason, and with no context. This is amazing. It's not even the beginnings of a joke; it's only a thing happening. It's suspiciously how a mean fish would serve coffee. Now let's see how a comic like this would work without the likability. It's time for a Type C: the confused idiot one.

This is fucking stupid. It's also not appropriate. This is a zinger a loving grandmother would embroider on a pillow if she wasn't sure what Ghostbusters were. I mean, we all get what they were going for-- these kids are too wild! But the line has to be something like "you need a lion tamer" or "a child behavior specialist." This Ghostbusters punchline only makes sense if the babysitter killed the ba-- oh my god, I was wrong. This is a murderer one. Let's see if we can get back on track with a Type D: Cranky Virgin one.

This is how wet t-shirt contests work! Right, fellow boob touchers? A lady leaves the Señor Frogs, still soaking wet, and leverages the honor into her sex work marketing? Wait, never mind. The joke is that she died. This is a murderer one. Speaking of, it's time for a murderer one.

Jesus. This is like if Gary Larson was raised in Guantanamo Bay. This cartoonist thought tearing a fly into pieces was such a universal experience he could do a basic role-reversal gag with it. Did they mix up their work folder with their drawing therapy folder? This is so much more a confession than a joke. It's like Yakov Smirnoff telling a Branson crowd, "Don't get me started on Soviet Russia. In Soviet Russia, mother's pantyhose smells you." Let me try to find a non-murderer one...

No, this is definitely a murderer one.

So is it a normal thing at Hustler to eat human meat? What would this cartoon mean otherwise? Melinda's ass tastes like beef? Why did they assume I'd be able to put this puzzle together? And now that I have, how much would she charge to floss her crotch with my shirt to convince my wife I've been farming?

Her s-son died? Wait, start from the beginning. This woman's fucking son died? Years ago?

What the goddamn shit am I looking at. How would you even begin to explain this. It's a tiny, sincere dad joke drowning in an ocean of comedy killers. It's like an illiterate trying to bond with her grandson on 8chan. I can't imagine a shakier tightrope to walk for a joke, and this cartoonist crashed on the drive to the circus. It's offensive to any sensibility you could possibly have with no shock or payoff. If you demanded an explanation, Tom Cheney would probably giggle, "Um, I guess you could say I have kind of a dark personality," before getting back to the wheelbarrow of human parts he was fucking.

You'd think it would be a slam dunk to link "be quiet in the library" with "shoot yourself in the head with a silencer," but it was beyond the means of this Hustler Humor comic. This is like botching a knock knock joke into an ear you stole from a hitchhiker. There have got to be more non-murderer ones. Let me find one...

Okay, here we go! A lady tied to the tracks of a model train! This could be cu-- wait, no. There's no caption and the tiny train sawed her in half. She's dead.

Alright, this guy pooped himself to death. It's not "I was killed alone and by a tiny train" funny, but it would be fine on a greeting card for a skeleton birthday or a sex crime conviction.

No no no no absolutely not, NEXT.

Wh-- that's the whole thing? This is a hateful drawing of nothing. This is a post with six likes in the Hellraiser dimension.

So if I'm understanding this correctly, this woman brought her husband's corpse to the doctor, but not a zany doctor where there's a comical misunderstanding. The doctor knows it's a corpse and tells her it's a corpse. "Your husband is dead," is not a punchline to the setup of a woman holding a dead husband. And no one has explained the premise. Why is she doing this? This is an "It's Pat" sketch, only the first character Pat runs into says, "Hello, you are a woman. Everyone listen: this person is a woman."

What? Oh, wait, I get it. There was some kind of printing error and somewhere else in the magazine is an acne-covered kid over the caption, "Ha ha ha and with that your flesh is nearly gone; let the maggots devour what the rats left behind. May your dry bones alone tell the story of your defeat."

Seriously, who are these for if not murderers? Is this a genre of comedy? If I scroll down far enough is there a Netflix category called "Acclaimed Sons of Bitches Fed to Birds"?

Look at this goddamn monstrosity. He wasn't even masturbating! This is an ordinary dead body in the closet and it's only there as set dressing for the joke, "Hey! Daughter!! Sometimes words have more than one meaning!" Why would you make this? "Guys, you know how Family Circus is never funny? I have a theory that you could add one simple thing to make it work. Wait, guys, I was wrong."

There's a lot to consider here. I think the magician isn't doing this on purpose? And I think the audience knows they're witnessing a real, non-magical massacre? But to what end? Is it some sort of allegory, or are we meant to be jerking off into a human head? Again, it's like a careless editor erased the word "REAGANOMICS" and left the reader with some unexplainable murder thing. Also, keep in mind this is not the work of an inept idiot. These are confident comedic choices being expertly drawn. This man is a legitimate maniac and this pointless blood frenzy came out exactly how he wanted it.

"Everyone is nude and dead, everyone is nude and dead," says the human like you and me.

This one got me, because what if Lover's Leap was a festering pile of dead bodies? Ha ha, it's almost the exact opposite of what you'd expect ha ha ha.

If you robbed graves, I guess you could sell the clothes. I'm not sure it's a joke yet, and while we're being serious, which of these is more likely: a man illustrating his every dark fantasy and criminal confession, or a shark eating a life raft of cartoonists and gaining their abilities?

This motherfucker took 29 words to say, "The corpses are sunbathing." Is this to save on makeup? Why are there so many schemes about violating dead bodies for several dollars in this porno magazine?

A lot of cartoonists would bog this kind of premise down with a joke, but after trying caption after caption, the man drawing a murder victim's penis thought, "No. Silent hosing is funny enough."

"Even for a kidnapper, you sure draw a lot of dead bodies," said the woman superglued to a chair in Trosley's studio. She added, "That one should say something like 'at least his snoring doesn't keep me up anymore!' Only, you know, clunkier and wordier than that, you piece of shit hack."

This Hustler Humor contributor wanted to do a timely piece on the energy crisis, but fell back on the tired punchline of a hockey trophy overflowing with human remains.

I swear this is the only magazine where you expect tits, get mostly farts, and occasionally get blindsided by a ratmancer killing his grandparents.

Maybe I've been driven insane by too many murder comics, but "700% too much blood" is my only note for this one.

This corpseless one reminds me of how I went into this article with such a defined concept. I spent hours clipping and categorizing cartoons to show the five unique ways this magazine was insane. But like the sharks writing and drawing them, I got distracted by all the dead bodies. I'm going to go back through these and see if I can end on a nice silly, horny one. Something with a cheating wife or whatever.

Close enough! Bye!

This good good writebox bring you by sponsor Supreme: Waylan Russell who not shark ate too much hot dog and can now hot dog, never shark no.

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