Dj vu in WoW comic contest?

A new winner has been announced for May in Blizzard's World of Warcraftcomic contest. While I like the art, I didn't find it particularly funny... but only because it already seemed very familiar. It turns out that a comic with a similar theme had already won the contest in June last year. It's not quite the same, but to me, the joke seemed to be the same thing: an overweight passenger on an undersized mount.

If you look at the comparison of the two comics (after the jump), even the color palette seems to be the same. They're both set in Hellfire Peninsula, too. While I honestly don't think one copied the other, I couldn't help but feel there was some sense of déjà vu with the whole thing. I mean, I like the art -- they're both nicely drawn -- but the joke seems to be too similar for me to laugh at the second one. Maybe the folks at Blizzard just find the idea of big guys on small mounts -- in Hellfire -- so funny that they just have to make it win again.

EDIT: Reader Amethyst pointed out an even more similar joke submitted even earlier, in October of 2006. The joke here is so similar to the May winner that it makes one wonder what criteria the Blizzard staff employ in selecting winners. It can't be the art, since we've had some winners that had so-so art (or screenshots). Is it the joke? If so, then why didn't the comic below win? In fact, I believe I chuckled at it more. Or maybe I didn't laugh at the new winner because I'd already seen it before. Just maybe... Blizzard has some mystical way of figuring out the winners.