Wednesday, 24 December 2008

Christmas Covers - December 25



For each day of December until Christmas I've been 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.

We finish this season's celebration of Christmas covers with a scene of the nativity from Junior Partners #5.

We'll be back in December 2009 with twenty-five more holiday-themed covers.

(2007: Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact #194)
(2006: Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact #35)
(2005: Dell Four Color #1274)
(2004: Captain Marvel Adventures #19)

(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)
(Lew Stringer's Christmas Comic Covers)
(Jon K's Christmas Comics Cover Countdown)
 

Death Takes a Holiday


















This special Xmas edition of Bizarro is brought to you by
Last Minute Gift Ideas.

The photo above is from CHNW's and my 2007 holiday email. We took this picture in Montreal in the beautiful and huge cemetery up on Mount Royal, for which the city is named. It isn't Photoshopped, we came across the head stone just as it appears and put our camera on timer to make the picture. As an inveterate hater of Christmas and the entire tacky season, I could scarcely believe my good fortune.

We searched for hours looking for other gravestones with names of other things we wished were dead like "Neo-Con," "Factory Farms," "Fox News Network," and "Reality Shows," to no avail. For some reason, they don't place them alphabetically.

The cartoon posted today is from several years ago and is one of my personal favorites. I published it on Xmas two years in a row and it was very popular both times. I got complaint letters both times, too, of course, from people who thought I was making fun of their heroes, missing the point of the cartoon entirely.

I'm going up to Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary for a dandy holiday with a nice big wad of friends. Hope your holiday is as groovy as the Monkees in 1969.

Christmas Covers - December 24



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.)

Calvin and Hobbes open their Christmas presents on the cover to the Tommy og Tigern Julehefte 2007 by Bill Watterson.

Come back tomorrow for our final Christmas cover of the year.

Just 1 more 'get-up' until Santa!


(2007: Action Comics #105)
(2006: Dell Four Color #666)
(2005: Dell Four Color #1274)
(2004: Captain Marvel Adventures #19)

(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)
(Lew Stringer's Christmas Comic Covers)
(Jon K's Christmas Comics Cover Countdown)
 

Tuesday, 23 December 2008

Fish Face

Bizarro is brought to you today by Solid Rhythm.

One of my favorite books as a student was To Kill a Mockingbird. The movie adaptation with Gregory Peck is great, too. A few weeks ago, a reader suggested the phrase "to mock a killingbird," without any firm idea of how to use it. I liked it and quickly came up with this caption and image for it.

Another reader wrote saying that he liked the cartoon but that eagles catch their prey facing the same direction as they're flying. That makes sense, I suppose, so I thanked him for his knowledge morsel.

I was inclined to draw the fish facing the same way as the bird, but reversed it in this case so that the caption would be on the right, which I liked better compositionally. But now that I look at it, it occurs to me that the fish isn't face backward or forward, his body is perpendicular to the eagle's. So they may be traveling the same direction as the fish when they nab them, but once in the air and they return their feet to their natural position, the fish faces sideways and it doesn't matter which way its head is facing.

These the are the kinds of things I spend too much time thinking about.

Some interesting stuff about the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee:
She was a tomboy and a childhood friend of Truman Capote, who was the opposite of a tomboy. (a tinagirl?)
She worked as a reservations agent for an airline until she was in her thirties.
After having published only a handful of articles, she quit her job and wrote her first novel.
It won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into an Academy Award winning film.
She traveled with Capote to Kansas when he was writing In Cold Blood, another great book.
Aside from a couple of short essays, she never published again.
Capote did very little publishing after In Cold Blood, and nothing of any real note.
Both Harper and Capote had prehensile tails.

For more information on Harper Lee and Truman Capote, speak with your village elders.

Christmas Covers - December 23



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.)


The Black Cat has fallen asleep waiting for Santa on Ken Selig's cover to The Original Black Cat #8 (1992).

Come back tomorrow for our penultimate Christmas cover of the year.

Just 2 more 'get-ups' until Santa!


(2007: Dennis the Menace Pocket Full of Fun #22)
(2006: Girls Bravo vol. 6)
(2005: All-New Collectors' Edition #C-53)
(2004: Impulse #34)

(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)
(Lew Stringer's Christmas Comic Covers)
(Jon K's Christmas Comics Cover Countdown)
 

Monday, 22 December 2008

A Time for Healing

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by a cult of pie worshippers.

I like a good pie chart joke. I like chart jokes of all kinds, in fact. My favorite chart joke that I've done was back in the late nineties and I'd be able to show it to you now if my big computer wasn't in the hospital.

For the last several days, I've been doing my blogs, email and cartoon coloring work on my laptop computer. It is several years older than my desktop computer and not nearly as powerful, so I've been slowed way down. Also, a lot of things I had arranged on my desktop computer for easy access are not arranged that way in my laptop, so finding things like my favorite chart joke from the late nineties would be too time consuming to attempt.

Last Tuesday night, my computer came down with a cough and a mild fever. I thought it was nothing, gave it a little Tylenol and sent it to bed. The next morning it was comatose and would not wake up. I rushed it to the emergency room and it is still being diagnosed. I should hear from the doctor today, keep your fingers crossed.

Get-well-soon cards are appreciated and should be sent to this address:
Guy Fixing Piraro's Mac
Somewhere in Park Slope
Brooklyn, NY

No flowers, please.

Christmas Covers - December 22



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.)

Hey kids: Rags Rabbit is back for the holidays on the cover to Harvey Hits Comics #3 (1987). (I bet you didn't even know he was gone...)

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

Just 3 more 'get-ups' until Santa!


(2007: Marge's Little Lulu #90)
(2006: Dell Giant #26)
(2005: Man-Thing #3)
(2004: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer #9)

(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)
(Lew Stringer's Christmas Comic Covers)
(Jon K's Christmas Comics Cover Countdown)