Monsters Ink

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Bizarro is brought to you today by Oh Migosh.

The thing I like most about this cartoon is the illustration of the monster. I think that frame makes the cartoon worthwhile – if I'd "phoned in" some crappy, average-looking monster behind a bush it would have fallen flat. Sometimes a gag stands on its own no matter how it is drawn, sometimes the drawing makes the gag.

I'm not big on monster movies, but when I do watch one, nothing takes me out of the moment faster than a bad monster. But sometimes the monster is so bad it becomes good again. You're no longer enjoying the movie for the reasons it was made, but you're still enjoying it.

The film for which the following trailer was made looks stellar.



And this film would be priceless even if the monster were not a mutant from Sesame Street.

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 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
3 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
4 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid
5 (R). Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert
6 (+6). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
7 (-). Dilbert: 2010 Day-to-Day Calendar
8 (-3). The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
9 (+23). The Complete Far Side 1980-1994
10 (-4). Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
11 (-2). The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks
12 (-2). Warriors: Ravenpaw's Path #1: Shattered Peace
13 (-5). Watchmen
14 (+6). Marvel Encyclopedia
15 (+25). Dark Tower: Treachery
16 (R). Wolverine: Old Man Logan
17 (-3). Bloom County Complete Library Volume 1
18 (-1). Predators and Prey (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 5)
19 (N). Batman: Battle for the Cowl
20 (-1). Simon's Cat
21 (+8). Absolute Justice
22 (-11). Green Lantern: Agent Orange
23 (N). Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace 1957-1958 (Vol. 4)
24 (N). Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born
25 (-). Batman: The Killing Joke
26 (+8). Asterios Polyp
27 (-5). V for Vendetta
28 (+12). Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume
29 (-2). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
30 (R). Absolute Death
31 (-8). Scientific Progress Goes 'Boink': A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
32 (-3). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
33 (R). The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes
34 (-8). Tales from the Crypt #8: Diary of a Stinky Dead Kid
35 (R). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
36 (+12). Time of Your Life (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 4) *
37 (R). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
38 (R). Dark Tower: The Long Road Home (Exclusive Amazon.com Cover)
39 (R). Final Crisis
40 (R). Stitches: A Memoir
41 (N). The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book
42 (-7). Batman: Year One
43 (R). Mouse Guard Volume 2: Winter 1152
44 (R). Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
45 (N). Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia *
46 (R). Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years
47 (-31). Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation
48 (N). Green Lantern Corps: Emerald Eclipse
49 (R). Batman: R.I.P.
50 (-). The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier

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:

* As we move into the holiday season, expect to see this list take a slightly different form than the rest of the year. In particular, big-ticket deep-discounted items will feature heavily, especially those of strip collections.

* Highest debut belongs to Tony Daniel's Batman: Battle for the Cowl; unsurprising, as most new Batman collections make an appearance on the list.

* Marvel does especially well this week, mostly due to the strong showing of their Dark Tower collections.

Thanks for Giving

Bizarro is brought to you today by Super-Sized Heroes.
If you're reading this blog, you've made it through another American Thanksgiving. Since many of my readers are outside of the U.S., however, I thought I'd explain what yesterday was all about.

We call the holiday "Thanksgiving" because it is based on a myth about early European settlers in America wherein the punch line is that they "give thanks." The story goes that a boatload of religious freaks who were run out of their homeland for pestering people with their intense self-loathing and superstitious nonsense, landed on this continent and built some cabins or whatever. The local inhabitants were all like, "Whatever, it's cool, there's plenty of space and resources for everyone. Just don't be douches about it."

When winter came, they all nearly froze and starved and the local natives felt sorry for them and helped them out. Then, when spring came, they decided to celebrate their survival with a modest meal with their kind benefactors, but it took them all the way until the next autumn to get around to doing it for some reason.

But then later the religious freaks did, in fact, become douches, as religious freaks almost always most certainly will, and they killed off almost all of the natives on the continent so they could steal their land and get rich and celebrate their "good fortune" each and every year for centuries to come. And what better way to celebrate such a humble story of survival and compassion than with a gut-gorging, bacchanalian orgy of fat- and cholesterol-injecting, artery-clogging, cardiac-inducing, gluttony? Millions of innocent birds are genetically modified, incarcerated, and brutally butchered to celebrate a handful of oatmeal salesman's good fortune 400 years ago. Sure. Of course.

For my foreign readers, the typical American Thanksgiving Day goes something like this:
Kids awaken and watch a parade on TV with gigantic balloon characters (representing products you can buy) floating above an alarmingly overweight crowd of Americans. Females are in the kitchen preparing far more food than their family and guests can possibly eat safely, males are watching football on TV. Food is served, large table full of already overweight people eat enough food to embarrass Henry VIII, family members argue, men nap, women clean and wrap leftovers, America increases its lead as fattest nation in the world.

You would think this would be scheduled for a Friday, to give people two days to heave, medicate, and sober up before having to go back to work, but instead, it is on a Thursday, forcing many uncomfortably flatulent and hungover Americans to suffer through another day of work before the weekend. Historians believe this is a remnant of the "self-loathing" part of the original oatmeal salesmen who started all of this.

Those who do not have to work on Friday, go to stores to make the gluttony and conspicuous consumption of Thanksgiving look like child's play compared to the supernatural uber-consumerism that will take place for the next solid month in honor of the birth of a Jewish magician two millennia ago.

I hope you found this brief historical account both entertaining and enlightening. Please direct your complaints to the comments section below. Happy holidays. : )

Holiday Travel Tips

Bizarro is brought to you today by Holiday Travel.

I stopped traveling during the holidays many years ago and it has improved my life immensely. If you're driving and you don't have far to go, you may have a little traffic to contend with and that's not such a big deal. But if you've got to fly, you may as well be playing Russian roulette.

Any time a person flies these days, they're taking a big risk of being annoyed to death, but statistics show that during the three main U.S. holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Festival of Saint Pancreas – the risk increases 287%.

Last year alone, 23,507 passengers were annoyed to death in the United States during the holidays, compared with 18,761 in the previous year. This year, only one day into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, officials report that over 2900 fatalities by annoyance have already occurred. With weather delays common this time of year and Sarah Palin's face in regular rotation on news channels typically shown in airports, thousands more are expected.

Mental health officials are recommending this year that if you don't have to travel for the holidays (i.e. sick relatives, on the lam, being written out of a substantial will) stay home and celebrate with local friends. And if you must travel by air, stay inebriated.

No Contest Today

Happy Thanksgiving!

We here at YACB wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

(Cover to Funny Stuff #29 by Otto Feuer courtesy of the GCD.)

Pumped up Pigeon

Bizarro is brought to your attention here today by Major League Baseball.

I am not proud of this, but in my late teens and early adulthood, I found the idea of becoming a bodybuilder appealing. It was part and parcel of the inherent masculine insecurity of my youth and I suppose I figured if I was built like Arnold Schwarzenheimer, people would know I was tough.

Now when I look at those big bumpy people, I am both repulsed by the malformation of their bodies and impressed by how much time they've spent lifting heavy things instead of doing something intellectually or creatively stimulating. Some get so big I begin to wonder if they can still wipe their own butts or reach a computer keyboard with both hands.

Of course, there is a difference between people who build their bodies for competition and people who go crazy and turn into balloon animals. I think guys (and gals) like that have a similar body image distortion problem as anorexics and plastic surgery addicts.

I enjoy exercise and sports, always have, so I've spent a fair amount of time in gyms over the years, but the thought of doing so 6 or 8 hours a day for years sounds like a prison sentence. In fact, that's pretty much a lot of prisoners actually do all day, but at least they're getting free room and board.

I don't mean to be overly judgmental, body building isn't for me but that doesn't make it wrong or worthless. I have a couple of friends who are vegan bodybuilders and they're both great guys. They enjoy bodybuilding and they're animal rights types, so they use their sport to show that one does not need animal protein or steroids to become strong and bumpy. Cheers to them.

They also still look human, which is a big plus in my book.