Others whisper that I'm the product of a failed comic-book series with a radioactive-anteater/blender love story, that the series tanked but the merch was selling decently, so John Deere picked me up.
When I was asked to be part of this comics issue, the failed comics artist in me asked for another chance.
In "Angry Middle-Aged Man," James Kaplan recounts Larry David's path from failed standup comic to wildly successful small-screen curmudgeon.
His beloved, tubercular dad first took him hand-in-hand to the halls where, in time, he would discover his scathing personification of England's post-colonial decline in the failed, seedy comic Archie Rice.
In the early 1970s, Art Barker, a failed nightclub comic and recovering alcoholic in Florida, seized on an idea that he thought could help win the war on drugs: If peer pressure had spurred teenagers to use drugs, peer pressure could be used to get them off drugs.
NBC has tried and failed with comic-book narrative before in its defunct series "Heroes," whose labyrinthine plot and overpopulated cast eventually drove viewers away.
Just as the spell-check feature in a word-processing program tries to save you from your own sloppy typing, either by politely suggesting alternatives or by automatically replacing egregious errors, the latest mobile devices are supposed to take care of your typos — but often fail with comic results.
The Bagger likes a good joke as much as the next failed stand-up comic, but ones about someone taking a face-full of bird-shot don't generally elicit a belly laugh, no matter who is doing the shooting.
The upcoming Joker origin movie, which is set in 1980s New York and stars Phoenix as a failed stand-up comic who apparently decides to invest in some face paint and turn to a life of crime, is due out October 4, 2019.
Hark Morner, the enigmatic figure at the center of Lipsyte's fourth novel, is a failed stand-up comic who becomes a self-help guru of sorts by espousing a form of deep concentration called "mental archery," which helps people find focus in a time of chaos and distraction.
