The Ephemerist

American artist Mark Doeffinger keeps a cartoon blog called The Lite Stuff, where he regularly posts new material. Quite often his cartoons voice a reaction on or an opinion about topical events or things happening in his own personal life. Doeffinger’s humor is direct, but not obvious : it’s no slapstick, but it’s no Far Side either.

His comedy mostly originates from bringing two non-related elements together (a snowman in the ice-age, for example), or from thinking up new, often literal, interpretations of current clichés.  Doeffinger himself puts it this way :

“I use the methods of commercial advertising to look at everyday objects (stuff) and events from a humorous (lite) perspective. The humor often comes from the interplay between word and object.”

Sometimes they cross the line way into the Land Of Groan, but when he’s able to restrain his tendency to actually lay it on heavily (especially by leaving out most of the textual elements), his cartoons wouldn’t be out of place in professional outlets.

(artwork © Mark Doeffinger)