This Artist Has The Talent To Make People Laugh With Single-Panel Jokes (30 New Comics)

Sometimes the internet feels like a never-ending doomscroll. Then, out of nowhere, you stumble on a single-panel comic where a whale complains about being pushed back into the ocean or a battery tells its therapist it’s trying to “focus on the positive side of things” – and suddenly your whole day tilts toward joy.

That’s the quiet superpower behind the artist featured in Bored Panda’s article “This Artist Has The Talent To Make People Laugh With Single-Panel Jokes (30 New Comics).” The spotlight is on cartoonist Nate Fakes, whose offbeat, single-panel comics deliver a complete, satisfying joke in one tiny square.

In an era where attention spans are measured in seconds and laughs compete with breaking news alerts, these one-panel jokes act like mini coffee breaks for your brain. They’re quick, clever, and surprisingly thoughtful – and they show just how much storytelling you can squeeze into a single frame when the artist knows exactly what they’re doing.

Meet the Cartoonist Behind the Single-Panel Jokes

The artist Bored Panda is raving about is Nate Fakes, a nationally syndicated cartoonist and creator of the panel series Break of Day. His work appears daily in over 80 newspapers and on the comics platform Comics Kingdom, where readers get a steady drip of his off-the-wall humor.

Fakes lives in the Los Angeles area and describes himself as a cartoonist, creative writer, illustrator, and proud donut enthusiast. He’s been drawing essentially his whole life, selling his first artwork in fifth grade and eventually turning that childhood obsession into a full-time career. In interviews, he’s open about the reality of cartooning: it’s tough, competitive, and sometimes unpredictable – but for him, also “the most rewarding profession.”

His flagship series, Break of Day, launched in syndication in 2011 and later joined King Features Syndicate, home to classics like Beetle Bailey and Blondie. On social media, especially Instagram, he posts new cartoons regularly and has built a loyal community of tens of thousands of followers who come back for his mix of visual puns, wordplay, and gentle absurdity.

What Makes These Single-Panel Comics So Funny?

Everyday situations, tilted just enough

One of the reasons these comics work so well is that they start in a very ordinary place: the kitchen, the beach, the therapist’s office, a living room with a couch and houseplants. Then Fakes adds a twist, often by giving minds and emotions to objects that usually just sit there – milk cartons eyeing each other at the park, a whale complaining about being shoved back into the sea during a rescue, or flowers judging the “weird” dandelion on the couch.

That small bend in reality is what makes the joke land. The viewer recognizes the environment instantly, then has to adjust to the idea that the milk is jealous of someone else’s “figure” or the whale is sick of being “helped.” The humor isn’t just the punchline – it’s that half-second of mental gear-shifting where your brain rewrites the rules of the scene.

Wordplay and visual puns

Fakes leans heavily into puns and double meanings. A stepladder gets told off by a teenager who snaps, “You’re just my step ladder.” A battery works on “focusing on the positive side of things.” A set of flies are unsettled as their kids play with toy swatters.

These jokes land because the image and the caption are inseparable. The pun wouldn’t work as a plain text tweet, and the drawing alone wouldn’t be funny without the words. That tight integration is one of the hallmarks of strong single-panel cartooning; as comics scholars point out, the best gags happen when neither the picture nor the text is fully funny on its own – the laugh appears when your brain collapses the two together.

Characters you recognize in seconds

Another secret weapon is how quickly he establishes character. With just a few ink lines, you know who’s anxious, smug, exhausted, clueless, or hilariously overconfident. His panels feature everything from animals to food to household objects, but they’re all, fundamentally, people: parents, coworkers, introverts, and oddballs you’ve definitely met, even if they happen to be whales or lightbulbs in the drawing.

This approach places him in a tradition that stretches back through famous single-panel works like The Far Side, which turned cows, scientists, and everyday weirdos into icons of surreal humor. If you’ve ever loved that style, Fakes’ comics feel like a contemporary, more internet-age cousin: instantly shareable, extremely scrollable, and perfect for the “send to a friend who needs this” moment.

The Art and Craft of a One-Panel Punchline

In his Bored Panda interview, Fakes explains that deciding whether the art or the text carries the joke happens pretty naturally. Sometimes he starts with a visual idea and builds a gag around it; other times he writes the line first and designs the drawing to serve it. He says he gets especially excited when he can create a panel that works without any text at all – a pure visual joke that still reads instantly.

Cartoonists and critics who analyze gag cartoons often note that single-panel comics are deceptively hard to make. You have to introduce a situation, twist it, and resolve it in one beat. There’s no room for side plots or slow build-up, so every line and every object in the frame has to earn its place.

Fakes echoes that idea when he talks about the “challenge of converting most of the story in such limited space.” When a gag feels too cramped, he sometimes turns to his larger Sunday comics, which give him room to spread out or use multiple panels – but for his daily work, the constraint is part of the fun. It forces both artist and reader to meet in the middle and trust that one clever idea is enough.

His career also shows how vibrant the one-panel format still is. While social media and webcomics have made multi-panel strips and longform comics more visible, single-panel jokes remain wildly popular because they fit the way we consume content now: quick, snackable, and shareable. Articles about modern gag cartoons point out that a single image with one great line is easy to repost, text to a friend, or drop into a group chat – it’s comedy built for the swipe era.

Why These Comics Matter More Than You Think

It’s tempting to see single-panel comics as “just” entertainment, but humor researchers and health experts keep pointing out that laughter does real work for us. Studies suggest that laughing boosts the immune system, increases antibody-producing cells, and enhances the effectiveness of T cells, which act like tiny security guards for your body.

Laughter also stimulates your heart and lungs, triggers endorphins, and helps your body reset after stress by briefly ramping up then relaxing your stress response. Mental health resources note that humor can lower anxiety, lift mood, strengthen social bonds, and help people reframe stressful situations in a more manageable way.

A single panel isn’t going to cure burnout or fix the economy, but a steady diet of small, unexpected laughs absolutely can change the emotional “weather” of your day. That’s what makes artists like Nate Fakes so valuable: they take the strange, frustrating, and mundane parts of modern life and hand them back to us as something we can laugh about instead of just endure.

Bored Panda as a Launchpad for Single-Panel Artists

Bored Panda has become a kind of virtual gallery for single-panel humor. The feature on Fakes is one of many spotlights on cartoonists whose comics condense an entire joke into one drawing, often accompanied by short interviews about their creative process.

Alongside Nate’s work, the site regularly highlights other one-panel creators – from Lynn Hsu’s New Yorker-style cartoons to darkly absurd panels by Jeff Swenson, as well as series like Bogart Creek and Laughing Hippo. This broader context makes Nate’s comics feel like part of a lively, ongoing conversation: each artist has a distinct style, but they’re all trying to answer the same question – “How much can I make you feel with just one panel?”

For readers, these curated collections make discovery easy. You don’t have to hunt down individual Instagram accounts one by one; you can scroll through a whole batch of cartoons, find your favorites, and then follow the artists directly if you want more. For the cartoonists, that visibility can translate into new fans, syndication opportunities, and support for books or merchandise – the building blocks of a sustainable creative career.

From Restaurant Jokes to Worldwide Readers

In the Bored Panda interview, Fakes mentions that some of his earliest and most personal work was about the restaurant jobs he had in his twenties. He drew comics for his coworkers, poking fun at regular customers, daily frustrations, and the weird camaraderie that comes from surviving a dinner rush together.

Those early cartoons had tiny audiences – maybe just the staff and a few friends – but they helped him refine his voice and timing. That’s a pattern you see across many cartoonists’ careers: humor that starts as inside jokes in one small corner of life eventually grows into something that resonates with strangers around the world, because the core feelings are universal.

Today, his jokes might feature whales, lightbulbs, grass buffets, or jealous cartons of milk, but the emotional DNA is the same: feeling out of place, worrying what others think, clinging to a small hope, or simply noticing the ridiculousness of everyday routines. That’s why a single-panel gag can feel weirdly personal, even if it stars a household object.

Want to Try Single-Panel Jokes Yourself?

Inspired to give it a shot? Cartoonists who work in this format often share similar advice about creating one-panel gags:

• Keep the idea simple. Trying to cram a long, complicated joke into one frame usually confuses readers. Start with one clear premise and one twist.
• Mix familiar things in unfamiliar ways. Some cartoonists use “gag charts” – lists of characters, props, and locations – and randomly combine them until a funny situation pops out, like pairing a bucket with a “bucket list” or giving inanimate objects very human problems.
• Test your joke over time. Fakes and other artists keep lists of ideas and revisit them later. If a gag is still funny the next day, it’s probably strong enough to draw.
• Let the drawing do some of the talking. Don’t write what you can show. Single-panel masters emphasize that the best gags use the caption and art together, not one explaining the other.

Even if you never publish a comic, playing with single-panel ideas can be a fun creativity workout. It forces you to notice details, look for double meanings in everyday words, and ask “What if this object had an opinion?” – which is honestly a pretty fun way to walk through the world.

Conclusion: One Panel, Thirty Comics, Endless Laughs

The Bored Panda feature “This Artist Has The Talent To Make People Laugh With Single-Panel Jokes (30 New Comics)” is more than just a gallery of funny pictures. It’s a reminder of how much storytelling, emotion, and surprise can fit into a tiny square when the artist behind it has complete control over timing and tone.

Nate Fakes’ work sits at the intersection of classic newspaper cartoons and the hyper-shareable world of internet humor. His single-panel jokes are visually clean, conceptually sharp, and emotionally light – the kind of thing you can read in three seconds and remember all afternoon. In a stressful world, that’s no small gift.

Whether you’re a comics nerd, a casual scroller, or someone who just needs a tiny break from reality, these 30 new panels offer exactly what the title promises: a reason to laugh, again and again, one frame at a time.

sapo: Cartoonist Nate Fakes has a rare talent: he can set up, twist, and deliver a complete punchline in a single panel. Featured in Bored Panda’s “This Artist Has The Talent To Make People Laugh With Single-Panel Jokes (30 New Comics),” his series blends clever wordplay, expressive characters, and offbeat situations into quick hits of humor that feel custom-built for our scroll-happy lives. From pun-filled therapist sessions to whales who just want a peaceful beach day, these comics prove how powerful one well-crafted frame can be – not only for a good laugh, but also for easing stress, boosting mood, and connecting people over shared, absurd little moments.

Extra: Real-Life Experiences with Single-Panel Comics (500-Word Deep Dive)

Spend a little time in the comments under Bored Panda’s single-panel comic posts and a pattern jumps out: people aren’t just clicking “like” and moving on. They’re tagging friends, telling stories, and admitting that a single goofy drawing did more for their mood than another self-help thread ever could.

You’ll see someone write that they read these comics every morning with coffee before work because it “sets the tone” for the day. Another person mentions showing their favorite panels to a partner or roommate at night as a little ritual before bed. It’s easy to underestimate how powerful these micro-routines become. A one-panel joke turns into a shared language: instead of saying “I had a rough shift,” you send the comic about restaurant workers or overworked appliances and let the cartoon do the talking.

Many readers talk about how single-panel humor fits into their workday. Because a panel can be absorbed in a few seconds, it’s the perfect break between emails, spreadsheets, or back-to-back meetings. You don’t have to commit to a ten-minute video or a long article – you just glance at one square, get your laugh, and get back to whatever you were doing. People describe scrolling Bored Panda or comics feeds on their phone in the elevator, on public transit, or in the lunch line, sharing particularly sharp jokes with coworkers standing next to them.

Some experiences are more personal. Fans of Fakes’ work often say his comics helped them through tough patches – health issues, stressful jobs, or periods of anxiety. That tracks with what mental health experts say about humor: it doesn’t erase problems, but it does give you a momentary sense of distance from them, which can make everything feel a little more manageable. One reader might see a comic about a stressed-out object and think, “Okay, I’m not the only one who feels ridiculous right now.” Another might laugh at a pun they’d normally consider cheesy because it arrived at exactly the right emotional moment.

There’s also a creative side to these experiences. Seeing a well-constructed one-panel joke can be weirdly inspiring, especially if you’re a writer, designer, or artist yourself. People in creative fields talk about how they study panels like Fakes’ to understand timing, composition, and economy of language – how he manages to squeeze a full story into one beat. Some even start keeping their own idea lists, jotting down random observations or bits of overheard dialogue in the hope of turning them into gags later, just like many cartoonists do.

And then there are the “forwarded by mom” moments. A lot of readers mention getting one of these single-panel comics in a text or email from a family member who doesn’t otherwise send memes. The image might be about aging, parenting, pets, or coffee – something relatable that feels safe and warm. That tiny act of sharing becomes a form of checking in: “This made me think of you.” Over time, those small digital nudges can strengthen relationships as surely as long phone calls do.

Put all these experiences together and you get a bigger picture: single-panel comics like the 30 featured on Bored Panda don’t just make people laugh in isolation. They quietly shape daily rhythms, offer bite-sized emotional relief, spark creativity, and create little bridges between people who might be otherwise overwhelmed, busy, or far apart. That’s the deeper magic behind this artist’s talent – not just that he can make you chuckle once, but that he gives you tiny, reusable moments of connection you can carry into the rest of your life.