Stuffed

My readers interested in veganism and animal rights will no doubt notice that I did not mention my feelings about animal slavery in the previous post including the cartoon about zoos. I think the cartoon says enough so I didn't expound. For those of you who don't know my opinions on this and are interested, I find all forms of animal exploitation – for entertainment, medical experiments, food and clothing (in countries where alternatives are available) – ethically indefesible.

And now, for the holiday season, I present to you what I consider to be a clever and humorous short essay about the "turducken" from a brilliant writer, Francesco Marciuliano. He is not vegetarian, or at least he wasn't last time we had a meal together, but he is sympathetic to my views on the subject. I haven't asked him, but I'd like to think I may have influenced this essay. Both his writing and his cartoons are among the few things I read daily.

Here also is a cartoon I did last year on the same subject.

(Click the image to see biggerized)

A Hard Day's Work

Bizarro is brought to you today by Bubblegum Deer.

Flew home from Caliphornia last night and am thrilled to be back at Bizarro International Headquarters. Even though being back means dealing with hundreds of emails, stacks of envelopes, a mountain of voice mails and a mob of lazy employees who haven't done a thing since I left last week.

Few people realize it, but it takes over 600 people to get each Bizarro cartoon from the planning stages to your daily paper. The think tank in my Conception and Development Department alone has 126 employees. From there, the ideas go to the marketing committee that tests them on various groups of consumers, then compiles a list of the ones that scored most favorably and sends them on to my personal assistant. She then reviews them to make sure none contain images or ideas that I might find unpleasant, and puts them on my desk.

After I've seen the finalists, I choose the ones I want to see finished and send them on to the sketching and inking department. Each cartoon is drawn by 13 different artists, then I choose the one that I feel looks the most as if I had drawn it myself. If none represent the true essence of Piraro, I send it back to be done again.

Once finished and accepted, I add my inimitable signature and send the image on to the coloring department. Each cartoon is colored by 8 different artists, then those images are sent back to the marketing department for consumer testing once again. The one that scores the highest is sent to King Features, ready for publication.

By the time a Bizarro cartoon reaches the discerning eyes of you, my precious readers, over 800 people have seen and judged it, and around 375 artisans have poured the entirety of their considerable talent into making it an authentic Dan Piraro Original. It's a long, hard day of bone-grinding drudgery for each of these tireless workers, but knowing that they've made countless inhabitants of planet earth laugh is a reward that money can't buy.

No syndicated cartoon feature works harder to bring you the level of authentic artistic integrity that you've come to expect from Bizarro.

Christmas Covers - December 10

For each day of December until Christmas I'm featuring a Comic Cover Advent Calendar. Just move your mouse over the image to reveal today's special Holiday comic cover. Click on the image to get a larger version. (If you're on a feed reader you may need to click through to the blog to get it to work.)

We celebrate Christmas manga-style with Yuji Shiozaki's cover to Battle Vixens vol. 9.

Come back tomorrow, and every day this month, for a new Christmas cover.


Just 15 more 'get-ups' until Santa!


(2007: The Bakers Meet Jingle Belle)
(2006: A Distant Soil #26)
(2005: Classics Illustrated #15)
(2004: Action Comics #93)

(Polite Dissent's 2008 Comic Book Cover Advent Calendar)
(Brendan McKillip's Comic Advent Calendar 2008)
(Brian Cronin's 2008 Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar)