Auction Art for Charity

The original ink drawing of this cartoon is on eBay for a charity auction right now. Currently, the price is WAY below what I charge for my drawings, so if you're into this kind of thing, have a look.

Misunderstanding the Superdork

Bizarro is brought to you today by Lingering Questions.

Some of the most surprising mail I get is from readers who take my cartoons to mean something drastically different from what I intended. This cartoon attracted a letter from a liver transplant recipient who thought I was insinuating that most liver transplants are required because the patient was an alcoholic.

This never occurred to me when I was drawing this cartoon, nor at any other time in my life, I was simply making the cliche comic connection between liver damage and excessive drinking.

Come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure what the hell this cartoon means. Now that he has a liver he can drink? Could he not drink before he had a liver? But why try to make too much sense of a cartoon about a talking lion and a tin robot anyway?

Even if you're not a football fan, you may enjoy this Superbowl story: CHNW and I were watching the Superbowl last night at our place with a friend. We have one of those DVR cable box things, so I was recording the game while we watched it so we could pause it, rewind, etc., and not risk losing the feed by accidentally changing channels or something. And since we were pausing it now and then, we were about 45 minutes behind the live feed.

In the third quarter it suddenly occurred to me that if the game went into overtime, the recording might run out and we'd miss it, so I'd better also record the show AFTER the game, just to be sure. So I clicked the "guide" button and selected the show right after the game and intended to hit the button that would instruct the DVR to record it. Instead, in a moment of colossal hand-eye coordination error, I hit the button that switches from the recorded show we were watching (the game in the 3rd quarter) to what was playing "live" on the channel at that moment. Which happened to be the very moment that Drew Brees, quarterback for the Saints, was holding up the trophy, confetti streaming down all around him. Of course. Why couldn't it have been another damned Geico commercial?

And thus ended our Superbowl party. I felt like a complete jerk, but was thankful that it wasn't a large Superbowl party, with 30 or 40 attendees with bets riding on the game. I'd likely be typing from a hospital bed right now.

Monkey Covers

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

Do not experiment on monkeys; as we see on the cover of Gespenster Geschichten Spezial #182, they do not like it!


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

High Wire Act

(For the love of god, click the image to make it bigger!)

Bizarro is brang to you today by Country Charm.

Speaking of wireless, the big news this past week was the Apple iPad. I don't know anything about the product because I don't keep up on these things, but it looks like a giant iPhone that you might find at a novelty store.

Other things I know about the iPad: some say it will revolutionize this or that, others say that it is a piece of crap because it doesn't have a camera.

I bought a little bit of Apple stock a few years ago, so I'm hoping that the "crap" thing isn't true. If all it takes to qualify as a piece of crap is the lack of a camera, 99% of everything I own is crap. In fact, I'm eating crap right now because this banana most certainly does not have a camera.

Here is a funny bit about the iPad from Mad TV that everyone has already seen.

Amazon Top 50

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


1 (-). Twilight: The Graphic Novel, Volume 1 *
2 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
3 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
4 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
5 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid
6 (-). The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
7 (+2). The Walking Dead Volume 11: Fear The Hunters
8 (+7). Dark Tower: The Fall of Gilead
9 (+13). Naruto, Vol. 47
10 (+14). Fables Vol. 13: The Great Fables Crossover *
11 (+19). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
12 (-4). Watchmen
13 (-6). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
14 (-4). The Complete Persepolis
15 (-3). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
16 (+1). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
17 (-4). Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
18 (-4). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
19 (+20). V for Vendetta
20 (+14). The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes
21 (+6). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 6: Retreat *
22 (+11). Thor, Vol. 3 *
23 (-5). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
24 (N). Seekers: Toklo's Story *
25 (-). Asterios Polyp
26 (-10). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
27 (-16). Batman: The Killing Joke
28 (+9). Predators and Prey (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 5)
29 (-9). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
30 (+2). Vampire Knight, Vol. 9
31 (R). Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned
32 (-11). The Walking Dead Book 5 *
33 (R). Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume
34 (-15). Batman: Year One
35 (+7). The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks
36 (-8). Stitches: A Memoir
37 (R). Marvel Encyclopedia
38 (+2). Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Volume 8 - Destroyer
39 (R). Bloom County: The Complete Library, Vol. 1: 1980-1982
40 (R). Tales from the Crypt #8: Diary of a Stinky Dead Kid
41 (-). Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days
42 (R). Y: The Last Man, Vol. 2: Cycles
43 (R). Y: The Last Man, Vol. 3: One Small Step
44 (-15). Stephen King's The Stand Vol. 2: American Nightmares
45 (R). Pride and Prejudice
46 (-2). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
47 (R). The Arrival
48 (-12). Black Bird, Vol. 3 *
49 (-1). The Long Way Home (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 1)
50 (R). Scott Pilgrim, Vol 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together


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:

* Twilight: The Graphic Novel dips down to #54 on the overall list, still good enough for 1st place on the comic & graphic novels list.

* This is the week that Amazon threw a hissy fit and stopped selling all Macmillan titles, which includes their First Second graphic novel imprint. Which may or may not have a bearing on the rankings.

* Naruto cracks the top ten, which it was not able to do back when Viz was releasing four titles at the same time. Now that it's coming out less frequent, its sales may be concentrated enough to show some charting power.

* Only one new title on the list this week: Seekers: Toklo's Story at #24.

Dummy Coughs Up a Gag

Bizarro is brought to you by Dry and Macho.

This is one of my favorite gags of late. Tons of cartoons have been done on ventriloquists, I've done quite a few myself, so the fact that I can still amuse myself with this topic is an achievement.

Notice I left any hint of blood out of this cartoon. If it had been web-only, I might have made it a bloody finger and the dummy might even have made mention of the fact that he was experiencing some anal bleeding. But for newspapers, this tasteful version is more appropriate. And maybe funnier, too.

Recently, I wrote a gag with the word "fart" in it and the crudeness of the word is such an integral part of the humor that no other word will do. But "fart" is prohibited in the newspaper comics world, so I'm out of luck. I'll have to save it for the book of adult cartoons I hope to publish one day soon. If I can find a publisher for it.

Contest Winners #17

Ladies and gendermen, boys and grills, we have our winners.

Grand Prize: Dan P (not me)
Second Place: Beezelbarb
Third Place: YazDay

Below is the winning list. If you'd like to see a graphic version with the differences circled, click here!















Join me tomorrow for more verbal ejaculations about my daily cartoons and next Thursday for another Bizarro Cartoon Puzzler Teaser Mystery Game Thing! You could be our next winner!!