Whap Goes the Weasel

Bizarro today is brought to you by Carnivorous Cabbage.

One more cartoon from my friend and colleague, Wayno of Pittsburgh. I like his gags and have featured a small handful in Bizarro over the past few months, with his permission, of course.

I like the contradictory image of a guy using a "carrot on a stick," not to entice, but to intimidate. If you want to see more of what Wayno has been up to, he has asked me to direct you to his FacialBook page.

In other news, a reader in Scandinavia has permanently scarred his body with one of my bits of artwork and I wish to thank him for sending the photos below. I am always honored when this happens, and would like to publicly state here and now that anyone who indelibly disfigures their body with artwork from Bizarro will get a personal sympathy card from yours truly. Other, more egoistic cartoonists might offer currency, jewels, or merchandise, but I am a humble man.

Monkey Covers

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

Spawn fights Cy-Gor on Greg Capullo & Todd McFarlane's cover to Spawn #57 (1997).

(Standard disclaimer about cybrnetic gorillas not really being monkeys applies.)


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

Eating Ourselves

(To make the cartoon big, click on the seagull's left knee)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Geriatric Mouse Voice.

Judging by the emails I got last week, this cartoon was very popular with environmentally conscious readers. Destruction of ocean life is far worse than most people realize because it is hidden under the surface. It's hard to get good photos of all that is missing from the sea. Most experts estimate that 90% of all large ocean life has been decimated in the past 100 years. Red Lobster All-You-Can-Eat night, anyone?

And judging by some emails I've gotten recently, there are a number of readers who think I hate fat people and think they are fair game for ridicule. My point is not that fat people are "funny" or "bad," but that human selfishness is ruining the planet, with Americans firmly in the lead. I know it is hard to resist food, I've battled it myself, we all have. And we're not the only species prone to this, we've all seen what happens to dogs when too much food is made available. For millions of years, humans couldn't be certain when their next meal would be, so our genes evolved to tell us to eat all that is available, especially the fatty stuff. It could mean the difference between making it through the winter and winding up as a frozen skeleton. But for most of us in developed nations, those days are gone.

Food has only been cheap and plentiful for our species for a relatively short time, so our bodies haven't had time to evolve messages that stop us from eating too much. My message isn't "let's all make fun of fat folks," my message is "wake up and smell the devastation to our bodies, our earth, and our fellow non-human inhabitants." I don't kid myself into thinking that this will ever change, but I feel compelled to comment on it.

On a lighter note, here's a silly cartoon about a clown.

Total Pigs

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by the Total Car.

A few years before I adopted a vegan diet, I stopped eating pigs because I read about how intelligent they are and how badly they suffer on factory farms, not to mention slaughterhouses. I later came to understand how all those critters I was eating were intelligent in their way and suffering at the whims of my taste buds, so I became vegan.

It's funny to me now that I used "intelligence" as a guide to whether or not a being deserved to be tortured and murdered. If that were true across the board, I can think of any number of people I've known who could be caged and butchered and sold for 99¢ a handful. "I'll have a Ricky sandwich and an order of Debbie nuggets, please."

Most people don't think that way of other species, I know. I didn't until I did, so I'm not judgmental about those who eat meat. I feel strongly about it, but I don't think that people who eat animal products are "bad" per se.

Pigs are really cool animals. I've gotten to know a bunch of them at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary and they're really fascinating. They're smarter than dogs, big, ugly, affectionate and full of personality. You do have to be careful to follow a few simple rules when you're visiting them, however. I saw one frantically rooting and snorting at a woman's butt one time, almost knocking her down, and sending her screaming from the pig yard. Turns out she had an apple core in her back pocket. No one got hurt, but she almost lost the seat of her pants.

Bunny Blues

Bizarro is brought to you today by Rodents To Be Pitied.

When I was young, I never bought the idea that people in animal costumes were actually the character they were pretending to be. I sensed they were regular people in giant costumes and was appropriately frightened of them. My mother would take us to get our picture taken with the Easter Bunny and I'd cry.

This cartoon isn't about the Easter Bunny, but it goes to a pretty strange place with no apparent explanation. I like this kind of humor, that which portrays an extraordinary moment in time not easily explained. Fans of this sort of thing don't need an explanation, it's just funny that this poor sap is in a bunny costume and talking about his hard luck and country western songs. Others with more literal minds, may think the drunken bum is imagining it. That's fine, too.

The real answer is that the upside-down bird under the bench is the world's foremost avifaunal performance artist and he has orchestrated the scene for the benefit of passers by.

Home is Where the Heart Is

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Secret To Life.

It was 1981 and I had just called the bass player in our band to find out where he lived. I needed to deliver something to him like a piece of electronics, or a packet of illegal substance, or a book I'd borrowed, or a blimp mooring tower, I can't remember now. He lived in a huge old house that had been turned into a multi-family dwelling. He told me the address, and said to go up to the porch, through the second door from the right, up the stairs, and to knock on the second door on the left.

Being a bass player, he lived in a fairly rough neighborhood and though I was a little on guard, I did not want to show any apprehension. So following his instructions carefully I found the house, walked up to the porch with confidence, burst through the second door from the right and walked in briskly expecting to find stairs up which I would clamor.

What I found instead was a large Mexican family of around a dozen people, watching television in their living room. I froze in my tracks, they snapped their heads toward me and froze, and we all looked at each other with equal surprise for several seconds, searing an image in my brain that has not faded a single pixel even to this day. Portrait of the Ortega Family at Home, 1981, oil on canvas, 40'x60'.

Lurching back to consciousness, I backed out, mumbling something like "sorry, wrong door, sorry, sorry," and scrambled back off the porch.

Looking back at the house, I was a bit afraid to choose another door, there were four along the length of the porch. Who knows what might be behind door number two – a tiger? an illegal dogfighting ring? Richard Simmons slapping a bellhop around?

I crept back up to the house, knocked on another door and listened, heard nothing and gingerly tried the knob. It opened, and there was a stairway inside. I found my friend's apartment and told him what had happened with the family downstairs. He smirked and said, "you're lucky they didn't kill you. I think they're drug dealers."

Thus ended my exceptionally brief career as an unwitting DEA agent. I'm glad I wasn't killed in the line of a duty I had no idea I was performing. I don't think you get a pension for that.

Courage Under Fire

Bizarro is brought to you today by the Second Amendment.

This gag was written by my friend and colleague, Wayno, a fine cartoonist in his own right. He enjoys seeing his ideas in Bizarro from time to time and I enjoy drawing them up. For more of Wayno's work, visit this here place.

Or go to Facebook and look for Wayno Illustration.

Speaking of Facebook, to any of you who have sent me something through that site, I apologize for how long it takes me to respond. I only check the site about once a month and click through requests and stuff as quickly as possible. I often don't have time to answer the comments and notes and things, I hope you will forgive me. Here at Bizarro International Headquarters there is too much for one person to do in a day and I can't afford an assistant. Thanks for understanding, you're a peach.