RARE PERFORMANCE ALERT

Hello, person.
I am performing some comedy this weekend in Philadelphia, please come by and say hello if you're in the area or willing to travel.

It's a 90-minute show in which I'll have a 20 minute set of my own usual cartoons and comedy stuff and another set in which I'll do a thing called "dueling cartoonists" with a friend of mine. The show is part of the Philly Fringe Fest and is all about vegetarianism, but is supposed to be funny and entertaining in spite of that. All I can guarantee is that my two sets will be.

I'll also be available for talking to face-to-face, and will likely be selling some of my trading cards or books or something. Depends what I can find around the house. CHNW will be there, too!

Show: Veggie Cabaret II
Date: Saturday, September 5th, 2009
Show time: 8pm, approximately 90 minutes, including intermission
Venue: The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tickets: $15, cash/checks at the door. Advanced tickets can be purchased through the Live Arts and Philly Fringe Box Office online at www.livearts-fringe.org starting early August or by calling 215-413-1318 after August 24th.
Ticket Special: $20 for first 8 parties of 2-3 that reserve Cabaret-style seating and vegan dinner platter.
Contact: Lisa Levinson at lisa@publiceyephilly.org or (215) 620-2130. Visit www.publiceyephilly.org for more info.

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover!

Now that's what I want in my Jimmy Olsen comics: Jimmy facing off against a giant green ape! Brad Walker, John Livesay & Pete Pantazis do the honors on the cover to Action Comics #854 (2007).

(Standard disclaimer about giant Kryptonite-infused apes not really being monkeys applies.)


Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

Trouble in Bug Paradise

(To enlarge the funny picture, click the cockroach's pointy butt)

Bizarro is brought to you today by the Reproductive Cycle of the Beetle.

This cartoon was particularly fun to research and draw as I'm a fan of insects in general. I don't like the harmful ones, like mosquitoes, lice, ticks (technically an arachnid), etc., but the rest are always welcome in my presence.

A few years back, CHNW and I spent a couple of months in Costa Rica in a hut in the jungle. Brought my computer and some art supplies and just worked my regular daily schedule there, uploading my work via a very unreliable internet connection (our only electronic convenience). Very large and strange insects used to wander through our living and cooking area daily and we really enjoyed the visits. I quickly learned to get all my computer work done by day, as the glow of the screen at night would attract swarms of flying buzzies. By the time we got back to Brooklyn, my keyboard and screen were both speckled with dead bugs, like a smiling biker's teeth after a road trip.

We both remember a large preying mantis that landed on CHNW's shoulder and turned back and forth, alternately challenging us both with his kung fu magic. Except for the ne'er-do-well vagabonds we rented our apartment to trashing the place and skipping out on half the rent while we were gone, it was a great trip.

Until next time, keep the ants off of your uncles...

FOR ADULTS ONLY!!!!!!!

This is a cartoon that I submitted recently but which was rejected for content. The term "up yours" was considered a little too racy for most newspaper funny pages, so it didn't get published. It was actually written by J.C. Duffy, of The Fusco Brothers and The New Yorker. He didn't have a market for it, so he offered it to me.

I knew it was "iffy" when I drew it, but I hoped "up yours" was innocuous enough to get by. I guess I should have known better. Lord knows what kind of calamity and social decay would have been wrought upon western civilization if this kind of profanity were to be printed in a comic. The body shudders, the mind reels.

Profanity is profanity purely and only because we all agree that it is. If we stop forbidding certain words or phrases, they immediately lose their power. These kinds of words have the magical power to offend simple because we endow them with it. The myth of profanity exists purely because we believe in it, which, in my opinion, is archaic.

I've never studied the subject, but my brain tells me this likely started ages ago when people were more ridiculously superstitious (I say "more" because people are still superstitious, but we weed certain traditional taboos out over the centuries and tell ourselves we're not) and they feared that saying certain things about god would bring his wrath down upon us. (I know, some people still believe that.)

From there, I suspect we added certain sexually-loaded language to the list, fearing that if we spoke these kinds of words, orgies would break out and society would collapse. I know from personal experience that there are people living in the United States of America in the 21st century who actually fear that if their children hear (or read) about homosexuality, they will become homosexual. These are people with jobs and college educations and drivers licenses.

Personally, I think it is all a lot of hooey. When I was raising my daughters, they were not denied knowledge of profanity, but told that certain words and phrases were off limits only until they were old enough to understand the social implications and use them appropriately. I didn't want my six-year-old using language that other people would use to make inaccurate assumptions about their character.

Not surprisingly, this worked. They weren't forbidden from knowing or uttering these things, they were simply warned of other people's reactions to them if they did and asked to wait until they fully understood this concept before they talked that way. Both are now well-rounded, happy adults. Their brains didn't explode.

I also did this with all matters of sexuality, illegal drugs, manners of dress, etc. If you tell your kids the truth and give them good, factual information on which to make their decisions, they tend to make the right decisions. Imagine that.

I could go on and on about the myth of profanity, but it wouldn't make any difference, so f*ck it.

I hope you like this cartoon, as a person who hates doing laundry, I got a chuckle out of it.

Please Forward This Post

Bizarro is brought to you today by Jabba the Stud.

I get a couple of hundred emails every day. Some are personal notes from people I know, some are from readers, some are about business, some are "action alerts" from various groups in which I'm interested, and some are forwarded jokes and supposedly funny pictures.

I don't read all of my emails because I neither have the time nor the interest. I can tell from the subject line and address what most of them are about and I just hit "delete" on all of the stuff I don't care about. That's probably what you do, too. What I don't understand, though, is when people get upset about unsolicited email they get and go out of their way to write to someone and insist they be taken off the list. I find it so much easier and less insulting just to delete them. (I'm not talking about Viagra spam and the like, which doesn't work even if you complain. That's what spam filters are for.)

I recognize that not all computers and email programs are the same. If you're on an old system that takes more than a split second to download mail and requires you to open each email to find out if you want to read it or not, I can see how excess mail would be bothersome. Perhaps wrongly, I assume that almost everyone has a fast system now and that all they are really complaining about is having to flick their finger to delete something they don't want. I'm probably as off base about this, but it just seems like there are better things to get huffy about.

By the way, I do personally read and respond to all of the emails I get from Bizarro readers, except when I don't. Occasionally I get very behind on email – with stuff I've flagged to be read and responded to, not the "instant delete" stuff – and I don't answer emails I mean to. If you've ever written to me asking something that requires a response and you didn't get it, it was an accident, I wasn't just being a poo-donkey. Sorry.

That being said, please don't write just to see if I'll respond. That would make me huffy. If you really want to know something, though, feel free.

Here is are lists of my read/delete preferences:

Read: Fan mail, personal friends, business requests, purchase/shipping confirmations, hate mail, evites
Delete: Action alerts, political alerts, newsletters, forwarded jokes, advertisements, Facebook alerts, spam my filter missed
Eye-rolling revulsion: Series of patriotic pictures reminding me to support the troops, series of lovely pictures reminding me to appreciate the simple things in life, series of nature pictures reminding me that God is with me always, links to inspirational videos and songs

Since I have time, so I'm going to post once more today. A rare two-post day. See next post.

Until tomorrow – in the feast of life, be the fiber, not the fat.

Amazon Top 50

Here are the Top 50 Graphic Novels on Amazon this afternoon. All the previous caveats apply.


1 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days *
2 (-). Mercy Thompson Homecoming
3 (+4). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
4 (+2). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
5 (-). Watchmen
6 (+2). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
7 (+4). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
8 (+6). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
9 (-). The Complete Persepolis
10 (-7). Fables Vol. 12: The Dark Ages
11 (-7). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
12 (+8). The Complete Peanuts 1971-1974 Box Set *
13 (+4). Parker: The Hunter
14 (+12). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
15 (-3). Diary of a Wimpy Kid
16 (+2). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
17 (+5). Fun Home
18 (-8). Asterios Polyp
19 (-6). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
20 (+1). V for Vendetta
21 (N). A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge
22 (+2). Batman: The Killing Joke
23 (+4). The Complete Peanuts, 1973-1974 *
24 (-5). American Born Chinese
25 (-10). Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Deluxe Edition
26 (-1). Batman: Year One
27 (-4). The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
28 (R). Predators and Prey (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 5) *
29 (R). Final Crisis
30 (R). Batman: The Long Halloween
31 (+6). Mouse Guard Volume 2: Winter 1152
32 (R). Watchmen (hardcover)
33 (-17). Time of Your Life (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 4)
34 (+14). Bone: One Volume Edition
35 (+6). The Arrival
36 (+7). The Joker
37 (N). Batman: Hush
38 (+2). Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation
39 (-9). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
40 (-9). The Boys, Vol. 4
41 (N). Unknown Soldier Vol. 1: Haunted House
42 (N). The Manga Guide to Calculus
43 (-1). Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns
44 (-6). Dark Avengers Assemble (Dark Avengers, Vol. 1) *
45 (N). Blankets
46 (R). Stephen King's Dark Tower: Treachery
47 (-14). Angel: After the Fall, Vol. 4
48 (+1). The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1

Items with asterisks (*) are pre-order items.

N = New listing appearing on list for first time
R = Item returning to the list after having been off for 1 or more weeks


Commentary:

* Mercy Thompson Homecoming is finally released, but can't quite topple the newest Wimpy Kid pre-order. It will be interesting to see how long it hangs out int he top ten.

* The rest of the top ten—seven out of ten titles—is dominated by the University Effect. Expect to see it continue through at least mid-September.

* Despite reports from certain comics gossip columnists, followers of these charts know that the Arkham Asylum GN has been hanging about in the low teens–mid twenties–upper thirties on the Amazon bestseller lists for many months now. There might be a little bump from the video game, but it's not very significant and we know that you can't judge trends just by looking at a one-time snapshot. If it moves up into the top ten, then maybe we'll have something; but until now we haven't ever seen movement on the graphic novel charts based on a video game release.

* The highest debut, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, saw some favorable mainstream press, and was as high as at least #4 earlier in the week. Another debut, the first Unknown Soldier collection, also had some MSM attention, but didn't get nearly as high of a jump in the charts.

Visiting A Broad

Bizarro is brought to you today by Vixen Travel Services.

I like this cartoon for its simplicity. The absurd lack of geographic proficiency of Americans is embarrassing and reflects our arrogance. It is yet another item on the "Why They Hate Us" list, and who can blame them? Far too many Americans are too self-absorbed and intellectually lazy to find out what is going on outside of our own borders. Or inside, for that matter. That's how the network calling itself "Fox News" gets away with passing off their absurd propaganda as "news."

On a less stressful note, with all the excitement of yesterday's first Bizarro contest I barely got any sleep last night. By the time the Western press was finished with me, around midnight, the Asian press started in. It was exhausting.

This morning, the winner, a reader indentifying himself as "t. tex," wrote to me and I was surprised to find out he is a guy I knew way back in my squandered youth in Texas. When I was front man for The Doo, Tex was at the helm of the infamous Dallas punkrock band, The Nervebreakers.

Tex is in Austin now, (good choice) and has a pretty interesting blog about music and other odd things. I got lost there this morning, applying my eye bones to the many peculiar photos and sundry art, to which I will be linking in the future. Always fun to find a new source.

Gotta catch some shut eye now. Conan wanted me on his show tonight to talk about the contest, but I just can't make it all the way out to the West Coast on such short notice.

See you in dreamland, kiddies...

CONTEST WINNER

We have a winner of the previous post's contest, a Mr. t. tex. I've posted his winning answers, coming in only minutes after I posted the contest, in the comments section of the contest blog. If you don't want to dig, here they are again, in t.'s own words:

Garfield graffiti added
snake added
screaming manface photo added
C gone from crash
backwards s
bugeyed little spaceman(?) in top right corner
month misspelled
object under car turned a different direction
image in back windshield added
license plate changed from pixie to piraro

Next contest is next week, and this time I'll announce it the day before, telling you exactly what time I'll post the images the next day, so that you can get a jump on the competition if you're so inclined. Thanks to everyone for entering!

Wasn't this fun?!

First Bizarro Contest!!!

Bizarro is brought to you today by Free Eye Exams.

For today's cartoon post, I've decided to try something different. A CONTEST! Weee.

The cartoon at top is the one that ran in the papers, the one below has been changed in ten ways. The first person to correctly list all ten differences in the comments section of this post will win an ENTIRE BOX of Bizarro Trading Cards. That's a bunch of cards, over a hundred, a full set, a 50-something dollar value retail.

"How can you afford to be so generous, Dan?" one might well ask.

To which I would reply, "I don't know, I'm just jacking around."

If the contest is fun and works out well, we'll do this from time to time. If it is a huge hassle for me and I start to sweat and weep, this will be the last one. Stay tuned.

Click on the individual images for a larger view. Some differences are easy (duh) some are hard.

Only one winner per contest. Must be alive to win. No purchase necessary. Do not use trading cards while operating heavy machinery. Light machinery is probably fine. Use of alcohol or tranquilizers may intensify effect of trading cards. Must be willing to send me a pic of yourself with your prize to post on the blog. Try to look excited. Winner does not have to agree to publish their name or location. Trading cards may present a choking hazard to people with a huge mouth and a tiny I.Q.

Let the slugfest begin...

Cave Democracy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Blood Sucking Babies.

I've always loved bats, ever since I was a kid in Oklahoma and could see them careen past the streetlight on our corner just after dark. The more I learn about them, the more fascinated I am.

Here are some of my favorite bat facts:

1. A single little brown bat can eat up to 1000 mosquitoes per hour.

2. Bats may have descended from primates, making them more closely related to humans than to rodents.

3. A single Mexican free-tailed bat can drink up to 3 bottles of tequila per hour.

4. There are over 1000 species of bats, making up around one fourth of all mammal species.

5. Vampires can not turn into bats.

6. Adam West, who played Batman on TV in the 1960s, was neither bat, nor man.

For more bat facts, go here.

Until next time, may your life be filled with Bavarian cream...

Could Digital Comics Save the Midlist?

I was contemplating this morning the coming wave of digital comics. (And by digital comics I don't mean Webcomics—those that are born online—but rather digital editions of print comics.)

It's no secret that the past decade or so has not been kind to the midlist in the direct market. A system has evolved by which the major publishers are chasing the hits with splashy first month sales. As in other media (films, books, music) this serves to depress sales of midlist titles, making it very hard for a comic series to have a long life selling in the middle of the pack. And you almost never see a comic series have a nice regular upward growth in sales.

It occurs to me that a couple of different digital comics models could be a boon to midlist titles.

The first, the "iTunes model" that is nearly imminent with Longbox, could results in long tail effects being realized. This would especially be a boon to smaller publishers that aren't picked up by a majority of comics shops, as they would have a way to point their widely dispersed potential audience to an online location for purchase. Since marginal costs for distributing digital comics is close to zero and "shelf space" is virtual, such comics can potentially find their audience much more easily,

The second, a subscription model, would potentially be more helpful for midlist titles at major publishers. An analogue for this is cable television subscription channels such as HBO or Showtime. These networks are selling a package to viewers, not individual programs. This means that a critically acclaimed title adds to the overall package and is not viewed in terms of opportunity costs lost by not doing the next big crossover event. (In an interview I recently heard with the head of documentary programming for HBO, she said that in her 30 years with the network no one had ever even gone over ratings with her!)

I for one want a comic market that can support a title like Nexus and that can nurture the next Bone.

Missing Link

As many a commentator noted, the first link in the previous blog about the caveman cartoon was not working. I've fixed it, so the "missing link" is back.

Thanks, Bizarrozzi!

Join the Club

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Talent Portion of Our Competition.

What's funnier than caveman violence? A lot of things, but today's cartoon is about caveman violence anyway.

I guess this joke comes from the recent economic catastrophe, known in some corners as The Bush Legacy, and while there is nothing funny about so many people being out of work, maybe a recently laid off employee might look at this cartoon and say to him or herself, "well, at least I didn't get clubbed or speared." Or perhaps even, "At least I don't have to go around in a one-shoulder dead animal skin and get an uneven tan. At least not yet, anyway."

Keep in mind that during the Great Depression, things were even worse than this and FDR brought us out of it with government spending, which Republicans (who pushed us into that one, too) decried as insanity. Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it and here we are again. But things are beginning to turn around. Let's keep our fingers crossed for a quick recovery. It took 8 years to bury the country this deep, it's going to take more than a few months to dig it out.

P.S. I think I used that photo that is beneath the "Talent Portion" link above before, but it's so great, I decided to use it again.

Until tomorrow, smile with every lip on your face...

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover!

A chimpanzee has an Ace up his, um, sleeve? on John Bolton's cover to Proposition Player #5 (200).

(Standard disclaimer about poker-playing chimps not really being monkeys applies.)


Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

Attached

(For a swollen version of this cartoon, click the question mark in panel three!)

Bizarro is today brought to you by Guinea Pig Farts.

This idea came from my good friend, Cliff Harris, who is a wordsmith extraordinaire. He plays with words in unusual ways, writes word puzzles, writes stories in puzzle form, and just generally defies the laws of language in ways that make me wonder if he was dropped on his head as a baby. This cartoon isn't really an example of those skills, but I'm going to publish a Sunday cartoon in the next couple of months that features three examples of one of his odd puzzle motifs. I'll call it "Bizarro Sunday Puzzler," or something like that. It will be fun.

Meanwhile, if you're out in Williamsburg or Greenpoint, Brooklyn today, motorbike and I will be at a vintage motorcycle show called Brand X. Find me and say hello, and I'll give you a free pack of Bizarro Trading Cards!
What?!
Yes!

Your smile feeds my aching soul...

Phonetic Vision of the Future

Bizarro is brought to you today by Stiff People.

Like most modern people in industrialized nations, I wear glasses and take the eyesight they afford me for granted. I didn't need them until I was 38 and my ophthalmologist told me that almost no one makes it past 40 without needing glasses. Apparently, that's just how long human eyes typically last before warping.

Up until relatively recently, however, glasses were not available to most people. So, the vast majority of our ancestors who lived beyond 40, lost their ability to read or do tiny detailed work and walked around in a blurry, ill-defined world. What a fuzzy drag.

I, for instance, occasionally lose the microscopic screw that holds the arm of my glasses to the frame and have to replace it. I can't wear my glasses while doing this, of course, and it is nearly impossible to line up the holes, get the screw in and tighten it without being able to see it clearly. And though I don't need my glasses for driving or getting around the house, I cannot read or draw without them, so if I did not have access to them, my career (and also my favorite pastimes) would be down the toilet.

Part of the story is that most people didn't live much beyond 40 until recently, and, once dead, weren't using their eyes anyway. But those who did live longer were just out of luck. Michelangelo, for instance, lived to be in his 90s and one can track the deterioration of his eyesight through his work. He did this in his twenties, and this in his eighties.

If humans last on this planet, and that's a formidable "if," I wonder what sort of current hardships that we take for granted will amaze our descendants.

Blog of the future: "Up until relatively recently, if people wanted to reproduce, they actually had to squeeze babies out of their bodies. I, for instance, don't have a uterus or vagina, so I would have had to find a woman who was willing to..."

Who knows?

Amazon Top 50

Here are the Top 50 Graphic Novels on Amazon this afternoon. All the previous caveats apply.


1 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days *
2 (+1). Mercy Thompson Homecoming *
3 (+8). Fables Vol. 12: The Dark Ages
4 (-2). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
5 (-1). Watchmen
6 (+1). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
7 (-2). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
8 (-2). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
9 (-). The Complete Persepolis
10 (-2). Asterios Polyp
11 (+1). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
12 (+2). Diary of a Wimpy Kid
13 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
14 (+4). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
15 (-5). Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Deluxe Edition
16 (-5). Time of Your Life (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 4)
17 (-1). Parker: The Hunter
18 (-1). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
19 (+14). American Born Chinese
20 (+16). The Complete Peanuts 1971-1974 Box Set *
21 (+7). V for Vendetta
22 (+17). Fun Home
23 (+9). The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
24 (-5). Batman: The Killing Joke
25 (+4). Batman: Year One
26 (-). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
27 (+18). The Complete Peanuts, 1973-1974 *
28 (+12). Green Lantern: Rebirth
29 (-4). Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War, Vol. 2
30 (R). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
31 (+12). The Boys, Vol. 4
32 (N). New Avengers Vol. 11: Search for the Sorcerer Supreme *
33 (-10). Angel: After the Fall, Vol. 4
34 (+8). Wolves at the Gate (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 3)
35 (+13). No Future For You (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 2)
36 (-12). Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War, Vol. 1
37 (-2). Mouse Guard Volume 2: Winter 1152
38 (N). Dark Avengers Assemble (Dark Avengers, Vol. 1) *
39 (R). Lost Girls Hardcover Edition
40 (-13). Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation
41 (R). The Arrival
42 (-12). Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns
43 (R). The Joker
44 (N). Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels
45 (R). Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days
46 (N). Invincible, Book 11: Happy Days *
47 (R). The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes
48 (-2). Bone: One Volume Edition
49 (R). The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1

Items with asterisks (*) are pre-order items.

N = New listing appearing on list for first time
R = Item returning to the list after having been off for 1 or more weeks


Commentary:

* The new Fables volume jumps up into the top five, while the new Walking Dead volume remains up there as well. Both have recently been picked up as potential tv series; perhaps a bunch of actors looking to get a leg up on the properties prior to casting calls? Of course, both comics have well-established track records as comics that appeal to the non-Wednesday crowd and that many people prefer to read in collections, which make them prime candidates for strong Amazon sellers.

* Mercy Thompson Homecoming inches ever so closer to the top of the list as it nears its release date next week. It's been creeping up the list for quite some time now, indicating that there will be a good number of copies going out next week to Amazon customers. (Maybe the publisher will make enough money to pay their freelancer payment backlog?)

* The University Effect continues, with Maus, Persepolis, Watchmen, & Understanding Comics all remaining in the top ten or rising up towards it.

* Two of the three new titles this week are pre-orders of Avengers hardcovers from Marvel, showing that a few Marvel fans are willing to wait a few extra weeks in order to get the sizable Amazon discount. The only other new item is the latest volume of Invincible, also in pre-order; if Image/Kirkman can successfully wage a 'from the creator of The Walking Dead' campaign, maybe it will see greater success in the coming weeks?

Happy Shiny Children

Bizarro is brought to you today by Well-Adjusted Kids.

This is one of those rare cartoons that is wrought from my own experience. When my eldest daughter was a kid, she was vacillating between wanting to be a writer and a musician, and wondered how she would ever be any good at either if her childhood continued to be happy.

A few years later, her mother and I solved that problem by getting divorced. There is nothing I wouldn't do for my children.

Speaking of screwed-up children, how are beauty pageants for children still legal? These things are clearly factories for mental illness and pedophilia. I can't help thinking that one day Americans will look back at pictures of these freak shows with the same disbelief and revulsion that most of us now do when we see an old photo of a public lynching.

I'm not criticizing the children involved in these events, of course, they are merely the monsters their frankensteinian mothers are experimenting on. In my humble opinion as the father of two daughters, this is as close to a beauty pageant as a kid should get.

Until next time, you are my lucky star...

Onion Does PETA

If you haven't seen any of The Onion's news spoofs, you must. Many are brilliant. Here's one that satirizes a public demonstration technique that my own CHNW has been a part of.Afew of the women in the actual PETA protest footage they use are acquaintances or friends of ours.


Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

Test Your I.Q.'s Buoyancy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Cat Porn.

This gag left a few readers wondering. It's a fairly odd idea and I'm not surprised it did not ring a bell with some folks.

It's a joke about stupid criminals. I saw a car with a canoe strapped to the roof one day and thought that if it was parked by a lake and some idiots decided to steal it but use the canoe to get away down the river instead of the car down the roads, they might flip it over and attempt to float it. Which would not work, of course. Then again, they'd never be able to flip the car over in the first place, so what we probably have here is just a stupid cartoon.

I've been doing cartoons 7 days a week for nearly 25 years and no matter how hard you try, you're just not going to create a refrigerator-worthy classic every day. In all modesty, I still think I've got a better batting average than most of the stuff in the paper, so I'm not going to be too hard on myself.

I you would like to know firsthand what it is like to be me, follow these three simple steps:

1. Come up with a reasonably original idea and scribble it down in cartoon form
2. Do that 9,125 days in a row
3. Write about it in a blog

Until tomorrow, my your world be full of unicorns and sexy foot massages...

Crazy Catless

Bizarro is brought to you today by This.

I just got back from Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary last night and was dead tired. I took a two-hour nap when I got home, then slept another 9 hours last night. Lordy.

I rode my motorbike up there and back (1971 BMW R75/5) and took the back roads instead of the big highway. What is normally a 2 1/2 hour journey took me 4 1/2 hours each way. Fun, but very tiring. Still, what a great time we had.

I'm behind on everything now, so no time to make a whole jazztown-hootenanny-blogspree right now. Got to catch up on a deadline and tons of email.

I like this Crazy Cat Lady cartoon because I know a few of them. It occurred to me that they'd be just as crazy without the cats.

Peace, love, and rainbows my friends...(tune in tomorrow for UNICORNS!)

Half Funny

Today's Bizarro is brought to you from Woodstock, NY.

I'm spending the weekend at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary with some friends. Such a great time is being had by all. We didn't plan it this way, but this weekend is a big celebration of some anniversary of the famous hippie-fest in the late 60s. Tons of ex-hippies, old hippies, young retro hippie wanna-bes, and average tourists are wandering the streets. We mostly just stay out at the farm, which is not close enough to the town to be affected by the festivities.

Last night they had a dandy fireworks show over the cemetery at the edge of town. For a small town, it was quite elaborate. Half the fun was watching the fireworks, the other half was watching how the fireworks affected everyone's drugs.

Got to get back to farm chores. Chopping wood, sweating, moving said chopped wood to the wood pile, sweating, feeding and cleaning up after animals, sweating again. It is hot today.

Planetary Possibilities

(Hankerin' for a bigger picture? Touch the Earth with your clicker deal.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Founding Robots.

When I wrote and drew this gag, I was thinking of the guy calling his wife at home on Earth. But when I formatted it for the web just now, it occurred to me that a person may well think he's just calling back to the module. For that matter, the astronaut could be a woman and "Honey" could be her husband. Or she could be a lesbian and "Honey" is her wife. Or a gay astronaut and "Honey" is his husband. Or an animatron of Richard Nixon from DisneyWorld's Hall of Presidents and "Honey" is James K. Polk.

So many possibilities in the world of comics.

Amazon Top 50

Here are the Top 50 Graphic Novels on Amazon this afternoon. All the previous caveats apply.


1 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days *
2 (+23). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
3 (+3). Mercy Thompson Homecoming *
4 (-2). Watchmen
5 (+6). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
6 (-2). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
7 (+2). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
8 (-5). Asterios Polyp
9 (+4). The Complete Persepolis
10 (-5). Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Deluxe Edition
11 (+13). Fables Vol. 12: The Dark Ages *
12 (+9). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
13 (-5). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
14 (-7). Diary of a Wimpy Kid
15 (+1). Maximum Ride, Vol. 1 Manga (kindle)
16 (-1). Parker: The Hunter
17 (-3). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
18 (+5). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
19 (-9). Batman: The Killing Joke
20 (-8). Tumor Chapter 1 (kindle)
21 (+10). Time of Your Life (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 4)
22 (-3). Final Crisis
23 (+3). Angel: After the Fall, Vol. 4
24 (+8). Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War, Vol. 1
25 (R). Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War, Vol. 2
26 (+7). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
27 (-10). Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation
28 (-10). V for Vendetta
29 (-1). Batman: Year One
30 (+7). Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns
31 (N). Pax Romana *
32 (R). The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
33 (-4). American Born Chinese
34 (R). The Walking Dead, Book 1
35 (-8). Mouse Guard Volume 2: Winter 1152
36 (R). The Complete Peanuts 1971-1974 Box Set *
37 (R). The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics
38 (+7). The Long Way Home (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 1)
39 (+3). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
40 (-5). Green Lantern: Rebirth
41 (R). Stephen King's Dark Tower: Treachery
42 (+4). Wolves at the Gate (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 3)
43 (-13). The Boys, Vol. 4
44 (N). The Walking Dead, Book 3
45 (N). The Complete Peanuts, 1973-1974 *
46 (-2). Bone: One Volume Edition
47 (R). The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll's House
48 (R). No Future For You (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 2)
49 (N). Classic G.I. Joe Volume 3


Items with asterisks (*) are pre-order items.

N = New listing appearing on list for first time
R = Item returning to the list after having been off for 1 or more weeks


Commentary:

* Huge movement for The Walking Dead, possibly tied to the announcement that's it's being developed as a television series for AMC.

* Highest debut goes to Jonathan Hickman's Pax Romana. For a collection by a non-name (though very talented) creator and not featuring an established character or franchise, this is quite impressive.

* We may be beginning to see the start of a university effect, where GNs that are assigned as reading in college classes take a bump up at the start of the semester. This would affect books like Maus, Persepolis, Understanding Comics, and Watchmen. Stay tuned over the next few weeks to see if this holds true.

* Is Green Lantern DC's new Batman?

* A GI Joe volume squeaks in at #49, showing that just because you have the top movie in the country doesn't mean that it will translate to big comics sales.

* I added in the 'R' code to differentiate items which are returning to the list, as opposed to items which are appearing on the list for the first time.

Comedy and Tragedy

This makes me laugh and cry simultaneously.

Zombie Therapy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Fashion Police.

Monsters who feel remorse for their behavior is a regular theme in vampire dramas – HBO's "True Blood," the film, "Twilight" – so I thought it might be fun to extend the same feelings to a zombie. He eats people's brains, then feels bad about it. If only Karl Rove were capable of such emotion.

A libertarian reader told me recently that he believed government should stay out of our way because most people are basically good and will do the right thing without government intervention. He called my view that humans cannot be trusted, "cynical."

He's absolutely right, it is cynical. I also happen to think it is realistic and accurate, as witnessed by recent human history. (By "recent," I mean the past 100,000 years.) While most "individuals" might be good, groups of idividuals in power cannot be trusted. Corporations are amoral by definition – their sole purpose for existence is to make money, not serve humanity – and the very small percentage of people who rise to the top of corporations are very often as unethical and unrepentant as a zombie. That's how they get there. Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, Dick Cheney, everyone on Wall Street, etc.

People who rise to the top of government usually have the same problem, of course; power almost always corrupts. But the difference is that government is not amoral by definition and in a republic such as ours, the politicians eventually, in some way, must answer to the rest of us. That is to say that if things get out of hand we can fire them, as we did to so many Republicans in the last election. (Of course, people have to be smart enough to figure out they are being screwed, which sometimes takes a while, but that's another story.)

It's not perfect, god knows, but it's better than letting markets police themselves and not screw the rest of us (see Wall Street, last eight years), and corporations not to pollute the planet and sell toxic goods to the rest of us (see last 60 years), and people to treat each other fairly and not seek to destroy those with more skin pigment. (See Civil War, civil rights movement, "birthers," current town hall hooliganism over health care, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Rush, etc.)

Stories about zombies and vampires are popular because they are a metaphor for our actual lives as we struggle to avoid the bloodsuckers and braineaters at the top. What discourages me most is when the monsters find ways to scare their prey into fighting for them, instead of against, as they have done so often in the past decade and most recently with health care reform.

Enough seriousness, now this.

Stick It

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Stick Figure Cathedral.

I like these kinds of ideas that require sparse art because I don't have to work on them as long. I like elaborate drawings as much as some of my readers like looking at them, but it is nice to have a simple idea now and then that would not support an elaborate background.

for those of you who miss searching for the hidden symbols, however, I have created the following alternate version.

Please enjoy responsibly.

How Amazon's Bestseller Lists Work

Those of you who have been following our weekly snapshots of the Amazon Top 50 Comics lists—and/or the recent discussion over at Comics Worth Reading of the same—may find the following article of interest

Over on Slate's The Big Money blog, Marion Maneker discusses "Secrets of the Amazon Best-Seller List," with speculation on how the list is derived, and how some authors attempt to game the system.

In short, Maneker quotes author Andy Kessler, who speculates:

"I'm not sure the exact number," Kessler says of the weightings, "but my guess is 40 percent hour, 30 percent day, 20 percent week, and 10 percent month. So if you have a huge spike in sales, you don't completely dislodge books that have been in the top 10 or top 100 for months and months. Though you might pass them for a very fun hour."

(link via Marc-Oliver Frisch)

Of Puke and Professors

Bizarro is brought to you today by Unnatural Acts.

I haven't much to say about this cartoon except that I think it's fun. Horses are great. I've never once opened up a GQ, so I know nothing about the magazine other than what its covers look like on a newsstand. Perhaps some of you already knew that by the way I dress and think I should open one more often.

More importantly, my old humanities professor is coming to visit in about an hour and we've been cleaning the house feverishly for the past 24 hours. It's almost done, but not quite. I like having house guests because it is the only thing that makes us clean up, but I hate it because it's hard work and I know that it will be a complete wreck again not 12 hours after he walks out the door.

My professor is a terribly cool old gentlemen, and visits NYC from time to time to see theater. We might go to see "Hair" with him. What a "hoot," as the homosexuals say. (To be fair, many heterosexuals and bisexuals say it, too, although I believe the term was made popular in the gay community.)

Must conclude now, I have to run around the house with a rag and some floor cleaner and buff out the cat puke stains.

Shoe Art

(Click this image to enlargerate.)

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I'd love to start a blog that just comments on the art of other cartoons every day. I don't have time to do it regularly, but here is a perfect example of what I mean.

Shoe's left arm does not match the rest of his body. The line weight is heavier and it is wearing a suit jacket sleeve, while the rest of him is all Casual Friday with a golf shirt, or whatever you call those things. Jim MacNelly, who created this strip and was a very talented artist, writer and editorial cartoonist, is rolling over in his grave. (I don't know why they "roll," I don't invent the activities of the dead, I just report them.) Somebody hires TWO people to take over his strip and neither of them can be bothered to draw an arm to match the body, or at least steal one that is wearing the correct clothing.

I don't know either of the people who work on this strip now, but it sort of makes me wonder if all of the pictures are stolen from old art and pieced back together.

Oops. I just noticed that his hand is coming out from behind a menu. Never mind.

The Doo, My Old Band

A friend of mine from the old days posted a video of my band from 1981 on Facebook. Steve Dirkx played with The Telefones, a legendary Dallas band from the same period, and used to film other bands with his 8mm hand-held camera, without sound. He then added another recording of one of our songs to this film, which is why the actions don't always match the sound. I'm singing through one of the guitar solos, for instance.

It brings back lots of good memories, thought some of you might enjoy it. I happy to say this is a song I wrote, though most of our songs were written by my best friend and guitarist, Mark Veale. He's the one on the video drinking the beer during the show. Others:
Lead guitar: Craig Means
Bass: Colin Marsh
Drums: Myron Blakely

Rock n' Roll...

Dueling Hair Balls

What you're missing by not following me on Twitter...

Time-traveling afros fight to the death.

Yes, I know that to those of you over 20, Twitter seems like an obnoxious bourgeois trend, but I'll do my best to make it fun for you. It's just two sentences at a time and maybe a pic. Break down and give it a try if you're at all curious. It's free and doesn't take more than a minute.

Or, do as I have done many times and climb to the roof, shake your fist at the clouds, and curse the gods of technology who keep cramming this crap down our throats.

Sublime Subtraction

Bizarro is brought to you today by Garfield.

I'm a big fan of an online feature called "Garfield minus Garfield." For those who are not familiar with it, it is simply the daily Garfield comic strip with Garfield removed. The effect is sublime. A study in loneliness and insanity.

G-G inspired this cartoon, hence the asterisk. In my humble opinion, while not as clever as G minus G, my cartoon about the musings of a field is every bit as exciting as much of what appears on newspaper comics pages.

Another fun site to check out is The Comics Curmudgeon, in which the erudite author humorously critiques the plot twists of various daily strips, with an emphasis on the old serial classics. Finally, a reason to read Mary Worth and Mark Trail.

If I had the time, I'd start a similar daily blog critiquing the "artwork" in comics. There is so much to talk about each day and it would be a blast. But time is something I have only barely enough of to keep this current miserable effort going, so it will have to wait.

Thanks for taking the time to learn to read and visiting this post. Truly, you are heart cockle warming.

TV Twittering

(Click the jewel on the genie's turban to get a moderate surprise!)

Bizarro is brought to you today by the Witness Protection Program.

I've harped many times on this blog about reality shows like American Idol and how I can't understand why people watch them. But it has a massive audience, so I guess I'm in the minority.

Last night, I saw a couple of minutes of a poker show. Apparently, people will now watch people play cards on television. This astounds me. Are there people so lazy that they are not willing to move their own wrists and play cards themselves, preferring instead to watch strangers do it? And they're not even dogs.

I understand why these shows appeal to producers; there are no production costs other than the equipment they shoot with. No writers, no actors, no sound effects or even editing to speak of, just a pack of cards and a TV studio. Half of Hollywood's on- and off-screen talent is out of work because of this kind of programming. And the vast majority of them aren't wealthy stars, but just working stiffs like you and me.

Those of you who enjoy this kind of show are perhaps saying that if I really enjoyed playing poker I'd find it fun to watch others do so. Perhaps, but I enjoy lots of things – eating, riding a bike, reading – but I can't see myself watching others do these things on TV. Even when you make a game of it, like those wretched eating contests, I am nonplussed. I'd almost rather be waterboarded than forced to watch gluttonous twits cramming hot dogs down their throats.

Which reminds me – I'm "tweeting" now, I'm a twit, you can twizzle me or whatever. PiraroBizarro is my Twitter name.

Kids Today

Bizarro is brought to you today by the Talent Portion of our Competition.

Yes, it's another one of those preachy, vegan editorial cartoons. Sorry, but it's a fun angle with a silly picture and it was conceived by my eighteen-year-old protege, Victor, who has been donating the occasional cartoon idea to Bizarro since he was a mere 15.

I had to fix it a little, but basically the idea was his. Although he had an alligator, a worm, and a container of talcum powder instead of farm animals, and the line was not exactly the same. Victor's original line was "What about Churchill?" And the chalkboard was a little different in his version, in that it was a deflated hot air balloon hanging over a clothesline, but basically it was the same gag. I just punched it up a bit.

So little Vic, or "Vickydoo" as I call him, was on vacation in NYC with his family recently and came by the house. We had cocktails on the veranda, then went to dinner and a nightclub, followed by dancing. All while wearing tuxedos and glittery gowns like those old Fred Astaire movies. It was mahvelous.



Enjoy now this photograph of Vickydoo and Yours Truly partaking of scotch and cigars on the couch at Bizarro Headquarters.



While you are at it, gaze upon this adorable depiction of the youngster wearing one of my hats. He was so excited most of the evening, his mouth gaped open like a catfish.

Finally, I offer this charming photo of little V wearing CHNW's motorcycle helmet and mugging for the camera with me and a local homeless man.

If Victor and his family had half as much fun that evening as CHNW and I did, they had twice as much fun as someone who had no fun at all.