It’s an old adage of comedy, and I wish I knew who coined it in order to give due credit:  Only the truth is funny.

In other words, any sort of material that isn’t based in real, genuine human behavior by definition can’t be funny.  

So, when Jonah Hill, playing a cop going undercover as a high school student, has his cover blown by a friend of his mother who a) knows he’s a cop and b) knows he’s working undercover yet continues to blab his real identity to the teenage drug dealers he’s trying to infiltrate leading to Hill shoving her into a department store display, it’s painfully unfunny.  The punchline is as cheap as it gets (old lady falls down), but the scene could work by simply making the old lady oblivious to what’s going on.  But, the script (by Michael Becall with a story credit to Hill) has established this old lady knows Hill’s character, so her insistence to keep blathering about his undercover status is behavior only motivated to deliver a gag.  No human being whose spinal cord is attached to their brain would ever behave this way.  It isn’t truthful.  And, it’s painfully unfunny.

Fanboy Comics Contributor Jason Enright brings you his top comic book picks for the week.

Avengers 24.1
by Brian Michael Bendis, Brandon Peterson, and Sonia Oback

This is a big week for Marvel with their big Avengers VS. X-Men event starting with its 0 issue, but, in all the excitement, don’t miss this awesome Avengers one shot. This issue deals with the emotional return of the Avengers' robot teammate, the Vision. I always love the Vision, because he seems to be the most emotional member of the team, and he’s not even a real person, he’s a robot. Yet, in this issue we see him deal with anger, depression, hatred, shock, and forgiveness. Bendis writes some great moments for the Vision in this book, and he really portrays Iron Man, Captain America, and She-Hulk well. He only fell flat with his portrayal of Magneto, who comes off like the villain he was a few years ago, not the repentant, older, and calmer man we often see in the X books. Brandon Peterson’s art is somewhat inconsistent, too. His style works great for the costumed characters, he seems to do very well when a character’s features are partially obscured, but his scenes with Magneto and Tony Stark make Tony look too old and Magneto just looks silly. Even despite a few flaws, this book tells a wonderfully small story of the Vision trying to deal with the emotional fallout of his own death and rebirth, and serves as a nice lead in to the big event books coming our way.