Punch lines themselves are funny, claimed Ludlow Porch. "If the punch line is good enough, you don't even need to know the joke. When you hear a good punch line, only two things can happen: Either you laugh because it is funny even without the joke, or the punch line reminds you of the joke and you still laugh" (
Who Cares About Apathy?).
So what makes the joke book
Count Draculations by Charles Keller so extraordinarily charming is how illustrator Edward Frascino approached the project. It's as if Frascino had been given a list of jokes but not punch lines. His profuse illustrations never take any one joke literally but rather depict punch lines to wholly different jokes that aren't otherwise in the book. Either he made up his own answers to the set-ups, or he illustrated better answers; either way, it's gold. True to Ludlow Porch's philosophy, Frascino's isolated punch lines are funny in themselves, and they invite the viewer to come up with the missing jokes. The illustrations in this book do not complement the printed jokes but rather offer a subtler (and superior) joke book within the joke book.
