Comedy Show!

Once again, you in the San Francisco Bay Area have a chance to see a comedy genius at work and help him pay his February rent!

Will Franken Announces:
"The Grand Opening Of A New Baby" (new one-man show)
Saturday, February 19th,
9pm
The Purple Onion
140 Columbus Avenue, SF
$20

Tix available here: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/154473

Be there or live a life without joy!
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Valentine's Ten of a Kind: Have a Heart

The sequel to last year (and of course with apologies to Bully!)

 

Betty & Veronica Spectacular #7
Binky's Guide to Love
Katy Keene Special #4
Little Lulu: The Valentine
Looney Tunes #28
Love Fights vol. 1
New Kids on the Block: Valentine Girl
P.S. Magazine #52
Sugar and Spike #33
The New Adventures of Felix the Cat #4

Monkey Covers

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

Gorillas like kitty cats, as can be seen on the cover of Looney Tunes #15 (1995).

(Standard disclaimer about gorillas in makeshift cages not really being monkeys applies.)

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

Read This Book

I read a new novel recently that I highly recommend. It's the first novel by the most exciting writer I've read in a long while, Benjamin Hale. I happened to meet him at a literary event in NYC recently and he was kind enough to give me an advance copy of his first novel, the cover of which is pictured above. I won't say much about it other than that I was blown away, couldn't put it down, didn't want it to end, can't wait for his next book, and I wanted to have his children. That last impulse has subsided some but I'm still looking forward to his next book.

Check it out here.

Cat Diary

(Click the word "click" for a larger image!)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Valentine Wishes.

I don't often do sequential jokes but here is one now. Just look a couple of inches above where you are looking now. I don't have a lot to say about it, so let's talk about something else.

Did you ever get one of those emails that has been going around for ten years or so about the cat and dog diary? I've gotten it many times over the years, it's one of those email jokes that just goes around and around. Well, the fun thing is that it started with one of my cartoons.

I wrote "Finding the Cat's Diary" in 1995 and sometime shortly after, people began altering and adding to it to create the email joke. It's now become something of a meme, which I must admit I think is kind of cool. It doesn't mean fame or fortune – I don't get royalties on its use or even credited for the original idea – it just means that I created something that got into people's heads enough that it was passed virally to enough folks that it became generally well known. Creative people like that kind of thing.

If you Google "pet diary" or "cat diary," you'll come across dozens of sites that post variations of this theme, featuring diaries by a cat and a dog, most of which start with a few lines from this cartoon. A guy named Allen Roland even took credit for writing it on a Salon.com blog. Kind of lame. It has ended up on some products, too, for which I could likely sue. Hmmm.

I'm also proud of it because I think it's a particularly good cartoon. Hope you like it, too. If you don't, just keep it to yourself. Like most people outside of politics, I'm capable of both pride and hurt feelings.

Get groovy schwag with these cartoons on them here:
Cat Diary
Remote Control

Lustige Zeichnung

Bizarro is brought to you today by Inspirational Art.

If you're as big a fan of ruthless dictator emoticons as I am, you'll love this cartoon. It features a Hitler emoticon. Actually, I've never seen a Hitler emoticon before my friend and partner, Wayno, sent this gag idea to me. To hear him tell it, his wife thought up the emoticon and he figured out a way to make a joke out of it. Then I drew it. I'm the blue-collar in this equation. Here's Wayno's story about it, which, if it differs from mine at all is just him lying again.

Speaking of attempted genocide, let's take a cartoon visit to The South. Somebody wrote to me and said that in Mississippi, people don't say "y'all." I admit I've never been to Mississippi, but I was raised in The South and have traveled a bit there and have never come across a state where they didn't say it, so I'm going with my original premise. If you've ever lived in Mississippi, let me know the truth. History demands it.

I'm off to wrestle with the tedious details of my job as the greatest cartoonist currently living in my building. Aufwiedersehen, y'all.

Want these cartoons on fine products of a wide assortment? Click below...
Hitler Emoticon
Y'all Turn

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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 (+2). Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne
3 (-1). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
4 (-1). Odd Is on Our Side (Kindle edition)
5 (-). Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Boxset
6 (+5). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
7 (N). Daytripper
8 (-2). Dork Diaries (Kindle edition)
9 (-2). Dork Diaries 2 (Kindle edition)
10 (+6). Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books
11 (-3). Walking Dead Volume 13
12 (+1). Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale
13 (+9). Superman: Earth One
14 (-2). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
15 (-2). Batman: Year One
16 (-7). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
17 (-2). Big Nate: From the Top
18 (N). Nemesis
19 (+8). The Walking Dead, Book 6
20 (+1). Batman: The Killing Joke
21 (+2). Walking Dead Volume 12
22 (+12). Fables Vol. 14: Witches
23 (+10). The Walking Dead Volume 11: Fear The Hunters
24 (R). Odd Is on Our Side
25 (R). Batman: The Long Halloween
26 (+12). The Walking Dead, Book 5
27 (-9). Watchmen
28 (-9). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
29 (+15). Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life
30 (-16). Naruto, Vol. 50
31 (-2). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
32 (R). The Walking Dead, Book 2
33 (+3). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
34 (-4). The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain
35 (-15). Dork Diaries 2: Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
36 (+7). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
37 (-13). Irredeemable Vol. 5
38 (-28). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
39 (-13). V for Vendetta
40 (-). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
41 (+8). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
42 (R). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
43 (R). Dilbert: 2011 Day-to-Day Calendar
44 (N). The Flash, Vol. 1: The Dastardly Death of the Rogues *
45 (-4). Batman: Hush
46 (R). The Walking Dead Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars
47 (-8). Blackest Night
48 (R). The Walking Dead, Book 3
49 (-24). Scenes from an Impending Marriage
50 (N). Fables Vol. 15: Rose Red *


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, and rises a bit to #64 on the overall chart.

* For the second week in a row, DC debuts a book in the top ten. This week it is Daytripper at #7. I figure there must have been some mainstream media attention for the book?

* DC also debut new Flash and Fables volumes in pre-order near the bottom of the list. The other debut this week is a pre-order for Nemesis, which is also Marvel's only entry this week in the top 50.

* Last week's big debut, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, rises up to #2 on the comics chart and #181 overall.

* At this point, sales of the Scott Pilgrim box set have pretty much supplanted sales of the individual volumes. The Precious Little Box Set remains at #5, while only two of the individual volumes even chart this week.

* Dead Watch: Ten Walking Dead collections chart this week, including the compendium which moves back up into the top 10.

* The bottom of the list is #2,400 overall this week.