Assaults of Laughter

Attacks on Sony Pictures Entertainment and Charlie Hebdo at the end of 2014 and the start of 2015 called the world's attention to the basic premise of this journal: comic arts matter as cultural products, and of all genres of comic art satire may matter most. But the important public topics of press freedom, attackers' motives, and responses to terrorism should not deflect humor scholars from urgent questions of our own: is satire funny? why should satire not prompt offense, even outrage? and why do visual media such as film, but especially cartoons, draw so much ire?