A Little About The “DH” Caption Contest Finalists

See: “CAPTION CONTEST FINALISTS & VOTE” for finalists and voting instructions.

WHEW! Well this WAS NOT easy. Thank you for your fantastic response. We received more than 1000 entries. A little about the criteria for choosing the finalists…
Many of the entries were very good but we were unable to choose them for one or more of the following reasons (something to keep in mind for the next contest)

Certain entries were not considered because…

1. I can’t use fart jokes. And boy were there A LOT of fart jokes. HEY LISTEN! I’m no fart joke snob. I like a good fart joke just as much as the next guy. Hell, if I had my way, Daddy’s home would be ALL fart jokes. But I’m not even allowed to say, “fart” in the comic. Maybe that’s why I’m saying, “fart” so much now. Who knows? Anyhoo, I have our audience to consider, and our newspaper editor clients, who spend their days looking for fart jokes to complain about.
2. They were based on local themes. We are, after all, a national… NAY! GLOBAL comic. So, with very few exceptions we do not have the luxury of making local references in our gags.
3. Some were slightly off color in “non-fart-joke” sorta ways. See fart joke explanation.
4. They were inside jokes. So, “inside” in fact that I didn’t understand them. For all I know, these were hilarious. But again, I’ve found that it’s best to try to make everyone laugh and not just your Uncle Pete.
5. Some of the gags were not compatible with the character’s personalities, or were just not something our characters would say. In some cases, characters were simply made up. We can’t use these because that would be confusing. For example, in several cases a flatulent dog was to blame for the hole. Since our family does not have a dog that we know of, we couldn’t really go there. Capice?

That said, there’s one more thing…
You may find that some of the entries chosen are very similar to the one you wrote. You might be all, “HEY! That’s the same as mine only worded differently. Why didn’t mine get picked?!” Well, in writing a good “gag” (they’re called “gags”) for a comic, every single word must be chosen and placed in an order that will maximize the joke. You’ve heard that “timing is everything” in comedy and this speaks to that. Cartoons have everything to do with timing, and the way an idea is phrased is just as important as the idea itself. So, if you notice a gag that is similar to yours but NOT yours, it’s because we felt that the one chosen was worded just a little bit better.

See: “CAPTION CONTEST FINALISTS & VOTE” for finalists and voting instructions.