Dancing

I am a huge fan of Tom the Dancing Bug and no fan of political correctness, so it seems fitting that I share this week's brilliant TDB with you. Click the image for greater enlargingmentation.

To read the TDB blog, click the offensive word in this sentence: Sometimes I enjoy a cracker with my soup.

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 5: The Ugly Truth
2 (+2). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
3 (-1). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
4 (-1). Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Boxset
5 (+11). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
6 (-1). Odd Is on Our Side (Kindle edition)
7 (+7). Walking Dead Volume 13
8 (+2). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
9 (+8). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
10 (+1). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
11 (+10). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
12 (+2). Dork Diaries 2 (Kindle edition)
13 (+4). Dork Diaries (Kindle edition)
14 (+2). Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale
15 (-6). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
16 (-10). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
17 (-5). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness
18 (-5). Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
19 (-4). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
20 (-). Superman: Earth One
21 (-6). Scott Pilgrim Volume 5: Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe
22 (+11). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
23 (+1). Watchmen
24 (+1). American Born Chinese
25 (-18). Dilbert: 2011 Day-to-Day Calendar
26 (+10). V for Vendetta
27 (+3). Big Nate: From the Top
28 (+1). The Walking Dead, Book 6
29 (-10). Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books
30 (-2). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
31 (N). Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, Vol. 1 - The Journey Begins *
32 (+12). Batman: The Killing Joke
33 (-11). Fables Vol. 14: Witches
34 (+1). Dork Diaries 2: Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
35 (-9). Walking Dead Volume 12
36 (+6). The Arrival
37 (-10). The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain
38 (-6). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
39 (-8). The Walking Dead Volume 11: Fear The Hunters
40 (-). Tron: Betrayal
41 (-3). The Walking Dead Book 5
42 (-1). Odd Is on Our Side
43 (+3). Batman: Hush
44 (N). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 8: Last Gleaming *
45 (-11). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 7: Twilight
46 (R). Blankets
47 (R). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
48 (-3). The Walking Dead Book 2
49 (R). Blackest Night
50 (-). Batman: Year One


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 Wimpy Kid stays on the top once again, but again slips, to #50 on the overall chart.

* The college rush continues, with Maus, Persepolis and Fun Home all in the top 10.

* Demand for individual volumes of Scott Pilgrim continue to soften, though the box set remains strong.

* Dead Watch:Eight Walking Dead collections in the top fifty this week, down from nine last week.

* Two new titles debut as pre-orders: Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, Vol. 1 (the only Marvel title on the chart this week); and the final Buffy Season 8 collection.

* The bottom of the list is a distressingly low #4,048 this week.

Confusion

Bizarro is brought to you today by Nothing.

I got a couple of comments from readers who didn't quite get this headache gag. While I fully understand how a person might not understand it, I'm not sure how to explain it. I think it is one of those oddball gags that you either find amusing or you don't. There is no secret to it that you're not seeing, it's just that this guy has a headache and his wife and dog are part of the equation. If you're still out to sea, get married, sit around with your spouse for 10 or 20 years then look at the cartoon again.*

I'd like to say this about the "Backwards Caps" cartoon: I hate backwards caps. Yes, perhaps "hate" is a strong word for how one could feel about a particular fashion, you're right. Okay, I think it is dumb. A baseball cap is designed with a bill to protect your eyes from the sun, not the back of your neck. It's the entire point of its existence. It is like wearing shoes on your hands. However, if you were the only person to wear it backwards, then you're probably just quirky and individual and I admire that. But if you started doing it just because everyone else is, you're just being a sheep. If, on the other hand, you feel confident that you like the way it looks independently and you'd wear it that way even if you had never seen anyone else in the world do it and tourists were asking to take a picture with you because you looked so silly, then it would be wrong for you NOT to wear it backwards just because it was a fad. And if you find that you're just more comfortable looking the same as everyone else, own it, girl, and don't change a thing. There is also no reason in the world why you should care about what I think of your hat stylings.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was wearing what I call "old man hats" a few years before they caught on with youngsters and now they have become a symbol of shallow hipsterism. But I refuse to give it up because I liked them before they became a fad and I still like them. Again, no reason at all you should care.

I hope this has been sufficiently confusing so that you now don't know what the hell to do with your baseball cap. Life is like that and we've all learned a valuable lesson.

And here, to round out our confusion, is a cartoon from 1997 that even I don't understand. I have no idea why it occurred to me or why I thought it was funny but it did and I did and I still do. Figure this one out for yourself, you're on your own.


*I'd like to mention that this cartoon in no way reflects my own marriage to CHNW. We have a ball virtually every day and she gets more adorable and interesting year by year.**

** Yes, she is a regular reader of this blog.

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Prepared

Bizarro is brought to you today by Preparedness.

If your head and eyes are not frozen solid in a single position, move them just an inch or so to the left and see the cartoon there. This will increase your understanding of my next sentence. People liked it.

Sometimes simple ideas work best and this one is a perfect example. I got lots of emails from readers who really liked the "interest-free checking" cartoon. It was the result of a collaboration with my buddy, Andy Cowan, who is a former writer for "Seinfeld". (He was responsible for their most famous episode, in which Kramer is elected Supreme Dictator for Life of all of North and South America, then has the rest of the cast executed. Rent it if you haven't seen it.)

Our next offering today is in the field of locomotive laziness. I think we can agree that the Segway scooter is an odd invention. On a scientific level, it represents an amazing breakthrough in gyroscopic technology as regards ambulation without moving your legs. God forbid we should burn one calorie more than is necessary, that would be unAmerican. But, like trans-gender immigrants, it has had trouble fitting into American society. Segways are not powerful or safe enough to be in traffic and most communities consider them too dangerous to allow on sidewalks, so they're pretty much confined to open fields and empty parking lots.

People with absolutely no sense of vanity occasionally use them for security purposes at malls or airports, but what was once predicted to be the biggest thing since indoor plumbing has mostly become an expensive novelty. I have no compunction about looking ridiculous, so I ride these things any time I can hijack one. I don't own one, of course, but they're fun to buzz around on when you can get hold of one. I kind of feel sorry for them, like trans-gender immigrants.

For some reason, the Interest-Free Checking gag reminded me of an old favorite of mine from 1997, so here it is. Again, I like the simplicity of it. I hope you do, too.

We're expecting another big snow storm tomorrow, so I've got to get to the gun store today and stock up on weapons and ammo in case there is a run on supplies at the corner food shop. Good Americans can never be too prepared.


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Nov 2010 | 63 pages | CBZ | 56.3 MB
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Batman 100-Page Spectacular #2

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Vampire Huntress #2

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