20 funny comics to lighten your mood and make you laugh

Hyperbole and a Half (Cover image via Touchstone Books)

12. Hyperbole and a Half

A fair number of the comics listed here got their start online. Indeed, without the easy access to a community provided by the Internet, quite a few comics creators may not have made it. It’s hard to think about, especially when you consider hugely beloved artists like Allie Brosh.

Brosh is best known for her blog, Hyperbole and Half. There, she tells stories about her life and childhood, illustrated with crude drawings made in MS Paint. It’s all reminiscent of “rage comics,” those ever-meme’d short comics utilizing crude faces drawn in the same program. Where rage comics stop short, however, Brosh keeps going.

Her art and stories have been so popular that it’s even become a meme itself. If you’ve ever seen that MS Paint image of a blonde figure in a pink dress who is going to “___ ALL THE THINGS!”, that’s Brosh’s work.

If you have ever felt like you were sliding back towards your wild, animalistic days as a young child, then Brosh’s work will ring especially true for you. Quite a few of her entries describe her childhood, which was either exceedingly strange or very normal, depending on your own experiences. Either way, Brosh tells it with an eye towards the strange and delightful, making even the mundane — like a child aching for a piece of birthday cake — gloriously funny and even strangely beautiful.

Things have not always been easy for Brosh, however. She’s struggled with depression and has produced two entries on the subject that have been hailed as some of the most incisive and funny takes on the illness. “I know of no better depiction of the guts of what it’s like to be severely depressed: Clutching your blanket, you are born into the baffling, boring, disorienting state that is depression,” said psychology professor Jonathan Rottenberg.