What The Duck
is a comic created by Aaron Johnson. It is a daily comic strip printed in many syndicated newspapers, including the Toronto Star.
The character most often in the spotlight is a white duck who makes his living as a professional photographer. Other characters include differently-coloured duck photographers, each with a different backstory and personality, as well as human clients whose faces are never shown.
This comic provides example of:
- 20% More Awesome: One comic has a client who wants everyone in the photo to look 20% happier.
- Alas, Poor Yorick: "WTD 1635" uses this classic stock pose and Shoutout To Shakespeare from Hamlet. One panel has a duck actor dressed up in aShakespearean costume, holding a duck skull, quoting the famous "to be or not to be". The second panel makes a comparison with a duck photographer stading in the same pose, holding two versions of one photo, asking "black & white or color". That is indeed the question.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: While a duck attempts to find the right camera setting, it goes from "Moving Water mode" to "Pregnant Woman mode", and finally "Pregnant Woman In Moving Water mode".
- Ejection Seat: The duck uses one here to eject an overly demanding client.
- The Faceless: Various human clients' faces are never shown. Usually their faces are hidden with speech bubbles or only their legs are shown in the frame.
- I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: This strip features the duck saying "I'm a photographer, not a magician."
- Medium Awareness: Another strip has one duck saying he "spaced out after panel one."
- Russian Reversal: "WTD 1646" makes use of the transpositional pun. The professional photographer explains it all: "I didn't choose photography". — "Photography chose me." ("After getting rich said #@€% you.")
- Symbol Swearing: "WTD 1646" uses random symbols instead of a swear word. "After getting rich said #@€% you."
- Your Head Asplode: In "WTD 1637", the photographer's head turns red with anger and then explodes because their friend keeps pestering them that they "should take a pic of that" again and again and again.
