The Best Jokes from Legendary Humor Zine Army Man

This is the story of the legend of George Meyer and Army Man, the revered and long-elusive Rosetta Stone for The Simpsons and post-Simpsons humor writing. That might seem a little grandiose, but Army Man’s history is steeped in the kind of mystery that drives comedy nerds wild.

It begins and ends with George Meyer, who himself, to be honest, is a little grandiose. A Harvard Boy and Lampoon alum who was hired as a staff writer for Letterman, Meyer was extremely ambitious from the jump. “I wanted to challenge the audience every night,” he said of his time at Letterman. “Stagger them with brilliance, blast them into a higher plane of existence.” Chill guy. After writing for a couple of shows, Meyer joined that illustrious group of writers who were quickly burnt out on SNL and had to get out of there. He moved to Colorado in 1987.

It’s one of those classic tales of self-isolation that we use to lionize writers, but rarely comedians. Free from the stresses of New York life, Meyer wrote and photocopied the first issue of Army Man, a zine of short, bizarre jokes, stories, cartoons and dialogues. Billing it as “America’s Only Magazine,” Meyer regularly brought his friends onboard, a murderer’s row including Roz Chast, Ian Frazier, Jack Handey, Bob Odenkirk, and—critically—John Swartzwelder and Jon Vitti. When Sam Simon got his hands on Army Man after photocopies had spread fax machine to fax machine around New York and Los Angeles, becoming a cult hit, he immediately snatched up Meyer, Vitti and Swartzwelder to write for the first season of The Simpsons. Meyer, who “so thoroughly shaped the program that by now the comedic sensibility of The Simpsons could be viewed as mostly his,” according to a 2000 New Yorker profile, was pulled away from Colorado and Army Man, copies of which became extremely rare. That is, until Meyer scanned every issue for a Tumblr user who uploaded them all here.

Having finally read all of it, all I want to do is gush about some of these jokes. So let’s do that.

Ask Uncle Trivia, Issue One, Page 1

“Q: How did the swizzle stick get its name?
A: The “stick” part comes from the resemblance between the plastic stirring rod and an ordinary wooden stick. As for the “swizzle” part—who knows?”

There’s something about this one that reminds me of The Simpsons joke: “Cows don’t look like cows on film, you gotta use horses.” “What do you do if you want something that looks like a horse?” “Eh, usually we just tape a bunch of cats together.” Just because there’s something so funny about a joke that sticks its landing by giving up. It’s something that’s really characteristic not only of Army Man, but the future work of many of its contributors.

Child of War, Issue One, Page 7

“I served in the Korean conflict at the age of three, and attended elementary school on the GI bill. My earliest memory is of the retreat of the First Marines from the Choisin Reservoir through a hellscape of frozen, blasted rock. I ate dog in Korea—a child’s portion, of course…”

This short story by Ian Frazier is basically a long-form piece within the context of Army Man, and sets the tone for others that would follow. This Apocalypse Now-ish first-person narrative is the direction The New Yorker’s “Shouts & Murmurs” section would shortly go in (Frazier had already been writing for them since the early ‘70s, they just took a second to catch up). Every detail here is pitched perfectly towards the grizzled tone of the monologue, from the narrator being sent to “the United States College of Army Guys” to his attempt to liberate Paris, only to discover it had already been liberated a decade earlier. “I took full responsibility for the error; never again would I disregard the reports of my intelligence staff.”

Suspense Theater, Issue Two, Page 1

“MAN: What do you think’ll come down on us—a curtain, or something unexpected, like a metal grating?
WOMAN: I don’t know. (Pause) I don’t think we’ll ever know.
(CURTAIN)”

These little exchanges are peppered throughout all three issues, often collected in columns (we’ll get to that). What tickles me most about these is that there’s a central idea communicated in each one, so that they almost function as micro-sketches that tap into something that might not play in a longer sketch. While they don’t all have bylines, Meyer’s inclusion of them might stem from his frustrating experience at SNL—he’s frequently insisted that his SNL sketches were too niche to make it to air.

Deep Thoughts, Issue One, Page 3

“We like to praise birds for flying, but how much of it is actually flying, and how much of it is just sort of coasting from the previous flap?”

The most concrete legacy of Army Man is this column by Jack Handey, which originated here and in National Lampoon before moving up the ranks to SNL and becoming Handey’s signature. In high school a friend sent me a link to every “Deep Thought” ever published, and I lost it, like an idiot. Never found it again. Meyer gave Handey a lot of room for these each issue, so it’s hard to narrow them down, but this one feels quintessential. The best Handey jokes have a premise that is already a huge leap of logic, with an answer that is more grounded then we expect.