WILL FRANKEN THIS WEEKEND!

San Francisco Area peeps, do not forget to go see Will Franken this Friday and Saturday night at The Purple Onion. You will not regret your actions and I will offer this personal, iron-clad guarantee: If you don't think he is one of the most brilliant performers you've ever seen, I will fully refund your sense of doubt by shouting, "YES HE IS!!"

Click here for the full story and more info. Tickets at the door only.

Angel Horse English

Bizarro is brought to you today by Great Abs.

After more than 25 years as a daily cartoonist and over 9000 published cartoons, I find that I sometimes copy myself. This angel cartoon is one such occasion. When I wrote it a few weeks ago, I thought it was completely original, but a few days after it was submitted I was digging through old archives, gathering super hero cartoons for my next book, and saw an old Bizarro with the identical concept. If I'd thought to write down the date, I could have shown it to you here.

Instead, I'll have to use what I call "language" to describe it: A couple of angels in Heaven are looking at another angel who is upside-down, his head and shoulders buried in the clouds. His halo is above his feet, his robe is falling down, but not far enough to expose his underpants (which would be considered pornographic by daily funny pages standards.) One of the two onlookers says, "In life, he was a performance artist."

I was shocked to find that I had ripped myself off so closely without even knowing it; thank god it was one of my own gags and not someone else's. I've done that on a couple of occasions, too, and felt like a quantity of feces.

And now a horse-in-a-bar joke. This is one of those weird cartoons that doesn't relate much to real life, but to me, much of the humor is in the look on the horse's face. I put a lot of effort into getting just the right attitude and expression on my characters, I hope you, the reader, notice and appreciate that. Some do, some don't, that's the way the cartoon cookie crumbles.

I got out of the habit of posting older cartoons for a while, but I enjoy it and so do many readers (perhaps you are one of those?) so I'm back to it today. I've always enjoyed this take on the cliche of the guy whose wife doesn't understand him. In fact, this guy could have been me.

When I was 20, I traveled through Europe with a backpack and a train pass and while in Milan, I met a beautiful Romanian woman who was a few years older than I. We spent many weekends visiting museums and parks together and I developed a huge crush on her and would have been stupid enough to marry her and take her back home with me if she'd been willing. Thankfully she wasn't. She spoke five or six languages fluently, but English was not one of them. We communicated by means of a bizarre combination of the hundred-or-so English words she knew and the hundred-or-so Italian words in my vocabulary. The rest was pantomime and pictographs. It was terribly romantic but I can only imagine what calamity would have ensued if she'd come back to the U.S. with me, learned English, and we had found out what each other were really like.

I dodged that bullet, but caught many others throughout my foolish, youthful romantic escapades. But how many of us escape life without a few romantic bullet wounds? As somebody once said: Better to have loved and to have been ripped apart over and over again by the machine gun of ill-advised sexual choices than to have never loved at all. Amen, brother.

Elevator Toast Music

Bizarro is brought to you today by Friendly Mailboxes.

Thanks is due today to Brian Levy of somewhere, U.S.A., for sending me an email last summer suggesting I do a cartoon about that thing where people push the elevator button a bunch of times, as though it would make the box come faster. I don't remember Brian's exact take on this but I decided to go with a guy who takes the concept seriously. It made me smile.

Next up is the melba toast factory, another collaboration with my good friend, Wayno. He correctly points out on his blog that smaller bread and toasters would be both more realistic and funnier. I agree completely, but err on the side of safety in these matters because in many markets, my cartoons print the size of a business card. I'm not kidding. It's a wonder anybody bothers to read comics in those kinds of papers.

Part of the problem is that newspapers aren't doing well financially and need to reduce the amount of space they use on things that cost money (comics, columnists, games) as opposed to make money (advertising), and another part is that most cartoonists don't draw in a manner that needs to be viewed any larger than a postage stamp, so newspapers don't think much of shrinking the comics.

In other news: The benefit concert last weekend at Woodstock Sanctuary went really well. Moby did a charming and intimate acoustic set with a couple of amazingly talented singers, and Kelli Scarr was typically brilliant as the opening act. To conclude the evening, we showed the avante gard film, The Red Balloon, as Moby joined Mercury Rev Clear Light Ensemble improvising music to the images. It was trippy, dude.

Today's trivia: At Woodstock sanctuary, we have a huge, white, bushy, deaf cat named Moby, after the whale. Moby, the singer, is also named after the whale because he is related to Herman Melville. Moby the singer, is also white but not huge, bushy or deaf.

Monkey Covers

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

Beppo the Super Monkey leads the rest of the Super-Pets on Art Baltazar's cover to Tiny Titans #28 (2010).


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

Tommy Can You Hear Me?

(click image for biggerer view)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Trios.

I was pleased when I came up with this take on the famous "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" adage, but didn't think much of it beyond that. I didn't predict that it would be as popular as it turned out to be; I got quite a lot of emails about it. I guess many of us are weary of seeing everyone buried in electronic devices constantly. Cops say that a person wearing headphones is more likely to be victimized by a robber or pickpocket, which makes good sense I suppose. You're less likely to see or hear them coming when involved in whatever is going on in your ears. Do I sound like the proverbial Jewish mother, yet? How about this: Ear buds are more likely to cause hearing damage than large headphones. This actually does concern me because I've already got a permanent ringing in my ears and have lost of bit of hearing, presumably from being in a band years ago. Now I sound like a Jewish grandfather.

In truth, I don't care if you lose your hearing or get mugged. Do what you want, you're going to anyway. I'll just sit here talking to myself and wait to die.

Speaking of three chimps, here is another gag about electronics, this one about texting. It was a collaboration with a friend of mine who was a regular writer on Seinfeld, Andy Cowan. You'll occasionally see his name on my cartoons as I've been enjoying working with him.

Lastly, is this cartoon about the odd ways of the Amish. They're famous for raising barns but not razing them. Is there another example in the English language of homonyms that are antonyms? (For those readers not familiar with these grammatical terms, a "homonym" is a word that describes gay people in some way, an "antonym" is, you guessed it, one that describes ants.)

I'm off to Woodstock Sanctuary for the Moby concert tonight, which, I'm thrilled to say, is sold out. Have a great weekend and use plenty of TNT.

Friday Night Fights: Krypto vs. Alien Invaders

 

From Superman #670 (2007). Artists: Rick Leonardi & Dan Green. Writer: Kurt Busiek. Letters: Comicraft. Colors: Alex Sinclair.

Super-powered pets? It's a Free-for-All, dog-gone it!

Amazon Top 50

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


1 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid 5: The Ugly Truth *
2 (+3). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
3 (-). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness
4 (+2). Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
5 (-3). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
6 (-2). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
7 (N). B.P.R.D. Volume 1: The Plague of Frogs *
8 (-1). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
9 (+3). Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books
10 (-2). The Adventures of Ook and Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future
11 (+5). Odd Is on Our Side *
12 (+20). Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale *
13 (+8). Walking Dead Volume 12
14 (-1). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
15 (+9). The Cloud Searchers (Amulet)
16 (-1). Troublemaker Book 1: Alex Barnaby Series 3
17 (-3). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
18 (+15). Dork Diaries 2: Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
19 (-2). Kick-Ass
20 (R). Hetalia Axis Powers Volume 1
21 (-1). The Complete Peanuts Boxed Set 1975-1978 (Vol. 13-14) *
22 (-11). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
23 (+12). Lost at Sea
24 (+1). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
25 (+1). Watchmen
26 (-19). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
27 (-8). Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill
28 (R). Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert
29 (+8). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 7: Twilight *
30 (+17). Empowered Volume 6 *
31 (-8). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
32 (N). Naruto, Vol. 49 *
33 (N). The Walking Dead, Book 6 *
34 (+10). Batman: Hush
35 (-8). Batman: The Killing Joke
36 (R). The Walking Dead Volume 11: Fear The Hunters
37 (-19). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
38 (-). The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
39 (R). The Long Way Home (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 1)
40 (R). Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life
41 (-19). Blackest Night
42 (R). Tall Tales (Bone Prequel)
43 (-13). The Complete Peanuts 1977-1978 (Vol. 14) *
44 (N). Witch & Wizard: Battle for Shadowland *
45 (R). American Born Chinese
46 (R). No Future For You (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 2)
47 (R). V for Vendetta
48 (-12). The Walking Dead Book 5
49 (R). All Star Superman, Vol. 1
50 (-7). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)


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:

* Even the new deep discounts are not enough to push Scott Pilgrim ahead of the new Wimpy Kid at #1 (#8 overall). It does however push them up on the overall list to #17, #19, #20, #24 & #25.

* A surprise debut, with a highly discounted pre-order for a BPRD hardcover compendium coming in at #7 on the list and #85 overall. The other debuts this week belong to pre-orders for a new Naruto volume, a new Walking Dead hardcover, and a new Witch & Wizard graphic novel from James Patterson.

* The final item on the list clocks in at #3,293 overall, more-or-less on par with last week (okay, slightly less).