Butt Darling...

Berzarro is branged to you terday by Rusponsble Dranking.

Not only can I not believe those aren't buttocks, I can't believe that not a single editor from any of my client papers objected to this cartoon or asked for a replacement. That I know of.

It does my heart good to see that editors are loosening their Victorian standards for the funny pages, giving us all a little more room to be "funny." (Not that it helps most of the time.)

I know that the female caboose has always been a source of fascination for men – it's biology 101 – but it is interesting that in recent years the MONDO BOOTY has come into style so much in popular culture. When I was in my teens and twenties, in the late 1900s, women were concerned with keeping their buttocks shapely, but smallish. Nowadays, with the popularity of women like Kim Kardashian and J-Lo, the epitome of ass fashion seems to be expanding. It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Body styles go in and out of fashion like anything else. I hope mine comes into style before I'm too old to use it.

Darkness and Despair

Bizarro is brought to you today by Crappy Internet.

I've been without Internet and Cable TV for two days, living in the dark ages like Attila the Hun. I sat in damp darkness eating bugs, totally out of touch with the world, no way to find out what's going on, no way to find out what "Weeds'" Nancy Botwin's latest kerfuffle was, and worst of all, kept away from YOU, by beloved blog friends.

I'm back now and can't believe all I've missed. Republicans have aired a TV commercial linking Sotomayor with Puerto Rican terrorists and infamous unrepentant domestic terrorist, William Ayers. WHAT?!!

Okay, that was about all I missed, I think. I'm back now, until the tiny plastic box bulging with wires and rubber bands and globs of hot glue that services my entire neighborhood in Brooklyn with cable and Internet is bumped by a squirrel again. Keep your cyber-fingers crossed.

Serving Pervs

Bizarro is brought to you today by Nine Nekked Men.

This cartoon appeals to me not because I think that transvestites are perverts – what do I care what somebody wears?– but because it sort of represents the hypocrisy we've seen in the news lately.

Once again, politicians who had formerly been outspoken and very "Jesusy" about others for cheating on their wives have been caught cheating on their wives. A politician who was turned down for a federal judgeship by a Senate judiciary committee years ago for being a racist, is the ranking Republican on the committee reviewing Judge Sotomayor. And he is, of course, accusing her of being racist. Business as usual in Washington.

Back to transvestites, I'd much rather see a man dressed in drag than anyone dressed like this.

NOTE: Before the "what about Bill Clinton?" comments start pouring in, I'm not talking about politicians who cheat, I'm talking about politicians who use their religious beliefs as a cudgel and toss around terms like "family values" like a frisbee. Yes, Bill Clinton and many other Democrats have been cheating scum. The difference to my mind is that they don't whip up the religious right to vote for them by pretending to be otherwise. Just my opinion, not worth a nickle more than you paid for it.

Brief Manga Review: KimiKiss, vol. 1

KimiKiss, vol. 1
Story by Enterbrain, Inc.; Art by Taro Shinonome
TokyoPop, $10.99

Given my professional interest in video games, I decided to order a copy of the first volume of KimiKiss, based on the apparently very popular Japanese dating sim for PS2. The story, which is complete in this first volume, concerns shy high school student Kouichi. On the first day of school Kouichi meets Mao, the former girl next door is is All Grown Up. Kouichi desires to be popular with the ladies, so Mao agrees to teach him how to be the kind of guy that girls want to date. You can probably see where the plot is going. But despite the copious fan service there's a sweetness to this tale of teenage love for boys, and there are worse things they could be reading while getting titillated.

Rating: 2.5 (of 5)

Bizasso

Quick clarification: In the title panel for this past Sunday's cartoon, I made a stupid mistake, which is doubly bad because I made it once before. When I created this panel, I looked up the sign language alphabet to spell out "Bizarro." Evidently, I looked at the wrong sign for "R" and used the one for "S" instead, so my original title panel spelled out "Bizasso," a mistake brought to my attention by several readers back in March when I first used it. I corrected the drawing later and placed the revised version in my files for future use. But like a doofus, I forgot to remove the incorrect version.

Yesterday, I used the incorrect one again, and again it was pointed out to me by readers. Some people never learn.

Personal Hell

(Make the Cartoon BIG by clicking the devil)

This episode of Bizarro is brought to you by Rainy Day Fun.

My version of hell would be to stand in line to audition for a reality TV show. Standing in line for anything for more than ten minutes is grueling, add to that the sort of delusional would-be "stars" that a show like American Idol most certainly attracts and you've got a party only Lucifer could imagine. I have no idea how the show works, but I'm guessing that tens of thousands of people try out each year and the vast majority of them are less talented than my cousin Ricky, who had his accordion taken away by the local city council.

Strange Week

Bizarro is brought to you today by Summer Weather.

I've been getting a lot of emails and blog comments in the last couple of days about the cartoons of July 10 and 11. I drew these five or six weeks ago and I suppose I was having an ambiguous week. Sometimes I get experimental in subject matter, or humor, or color scheme, and even if it doesn't work for everyone, I think it keeps the feature fresh. For me, at least, which I think is important. If I get bored, it will show.

This cartoon about the happy family means nothing more than what it looks like. It's just funny to me. "Let's get started!" doing what? I don't know. What do happy, perfect families do at home at night? I don't know anyone who had one, so I've no experience to draw from.

When I was a child, my own family looked very normal from the outside, the quintessential Ozzy-and-Harriet dreamworld. And even though we ate dinner together every night, then settled in to watch TV, it was not the utopia pictured above.

Night after night, we were forced to watch industrial training films from the linoleum industry over and over again. To make certain we were paying attention, my mother shot live rounds over our heads. Dad watched from a dog cage under the dining room table, barking and panting like a Golden Retriever. One of my sisters was born with gills and lived in an oil drum full of water. Her splashing would spot the TV screen with rainbow dots of magnifying liquid.

Maybe this cartoon was just therapy for me.

REGARDING YESTERDAY'S CARTOON: A few people have complained that suicide isn't funny. I agree, I lost a good friend to suicide. But humor of this kind is a uniquely human practice and serves a valuable purpose for us. To find humor in what scares or horrifies us gives us a psychological edge over the tragedy. This kind of humor has existed in human cultures for as long as we've been writing things down.

Some time ago, I promised a reader I would not picture suicide in my cartoons for the very reason that some of you were offended, and I've kept to that. But I think a cartoon such as this one is so far fetched and the reader is left to wonder/assume what has happened to the woman, that it does not strike the same chord. To me, anyway. One person accused me of being sexist because the cartoon insinuates that all men want when they come home from work is sex from their woman. This cartoon is not about what men want when they come home from work, but that if a man comes home from work and sees his partner's clothing spread seductively in a trail across the floor, 99% of them are going to think of sex. Either she is seducing him, or she has already seduced someone else. It's not insulting, its human nature.