Attention: This is the New Face of Comics

Raina Telgemeier has a livejournal post about her recent book tour for her graphic novel Smile. Schools, book stores, libraries, conventions, even an orthodontist's office! Speaking to crowds as large as 220 (mostly kids). Doing a comics workshop for a bunch of middle school girls. Giving a lecture to a class of college students. It's well worth a read.

The future of comics is in good hands.

(link via The Beat)

See This Show

My good friend and comedy genius from another dimension, Will Franken, is doing another one-man show at The Purple Onion again soon. See it if you can, he is a rare performer without equal. Below are Will's own words:

Will Franken in “I’ll Be Your Neck”
The Purple Onion
140 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco
Saturday, November 20th
(2 shows; 8pm and 10pm)
$20

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/134380

Get your tickets now!

“I’ll Be Your Neck” is the story of one’s man pursuit to hold a woman’s head because she’s too beautiful to use her own neck.

It’s also the story of many other things as well. There’s an 8-year old black girl narrating Spike Lee’s remake of “Silence of the Lambs” (momma talk about the bad man sometimes. He wanted momma to put lotion on her skin. But momma didn’t want to. . .)

It’s the story of a jealous husband who sulks alone in his bedroom while Will laughs it up downstairs with the wife. Based on true events, Will plays the parts of the husband, the wife, and himself. “Honey, can I talk to you in the bedroom real quick? I can’t find my shoehorn! Will, how is the comedy going? Well, it certainly sounds like my wife is a huge fan! I can hear her laughing all the way upstairs in the bedroom where her and I sleep as husband and wife! Honey, can you please help me find the shoehorn?”

It’s the story of an inverse world where the white trash guys from Fresno are running tech support for Indians who don’t know anything about computers.

It’s the story of the big screen adaptation of “Handbags With Mary Beth On QVC” featuring Christopher Walken as Mary Beth, Crispin Glover as Joyce (his co-host), and Stephen Hawking as Caller #7.

It’s the story of how a man mistook a cowlick for a brain tumor and how the doctor still expects him to pay for an over-the-counter hair gel.

It’s the story, all right.

Come see this story and you’ll have plenty of stories to tell.

I’m Will Franken. And this is my story.

Wm.

(willfranken.com)

Homeward and Bound

Bizarro is brought to you today by Ageless Heroism.

I'm busy as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs this week as I try to get ahead on deadlines for my big trip next week to the land of milk and honey, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Next week, on Thursday and Friday, I'm doing a couple of events in my hometown as well as speaking to a few classes of art students at my old high school, visiting family and old friends, and breaking into pharmacies in the middle of the night. I've found it's even cheaper than ordering drugs from Canada.

It's a fun visit, but can be emotionally taxing. My family is great, no problems there (except for my brother's wife who drinks constantly and inevitably pulls me into a closet at my parent's house and tries to make out with me) but seeing how the old stomping grounds and its inhabitants have changed is a challenge.

"Oh look, that's where the Pagoda Palace used to be, where I took my prom date for an exotic Chinese dinner. Now it's 1/85 of a parking lot for Walmart."

"Oh, look, there is a girl I dated in high school, now she's a greeter at Walmart, a born-again Christian and has 16 children and counting."

"And who's that guy sitting in the front row of my talk at the museum? He looks a little like the father of Kurt, a kid I rode bikes with in junior high school. Oh, that's actually him – do I look that much like my dad did in 1971? I remember Kurt cheating off my paper in math class because he wasn't very smart. Right after college, he came up with some Internet thing, sold it for millions and hasn't worked in 29 years. Will you help me kill him?"

But the good outweighs the bad and I'm really looking forward to it. The breaking news this week is that my Dad, Fred Piraro, is going to be opening for me at the Elk's Lodge show. He'll be warming up the crowd with a few of his comedy stylings, then introducing me. He's done this kind of thing for me before and he's very good at it. He doesn't have any formal experience as a stand-up comic, but if you get a couple drinks into most old Sicilian guys, they pretty much become the life of any party. Or strangle someone with a piano wire. (We're keeping him away from the piano that night.)

Hope to see you there.

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My Marathon

Here are a couple of pictures of me running the NYC Marathon yesterday. It passes by about a block from my house and every year I see all those people jogging past hour after hour and listen to the bumper-to-bumper detoured traffic on my street honking and wonder, "what's the big deal with that thing, huh?"

So this year I decided to compete. I didn't win, but as anyone who runs in this kind of event can tell you, it's not about winning, it's about the personal challenge. And it was very challenging to get out of bed that early on a Sunday.
I hope these pictures will help you to admire me and maybe inspire yourself to get out of bed, too.

Monkey Covers

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

Mahilla Gorilla maybe should not have used spot remover on the cover of Magilla Gorilla #4 (1970).

(Standard disclaimer about dog-washing gorillas not really being monkeys applies.)

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

Sexy Children Dogs

Bizarro is brought to you today by Contraceptive Fashion.

People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive issue comes out on November 17th and if they don't pick me this year, I say SCREW THEM. I have all of the qualifications they list: I'm alive and I'm sexy. (Says CHNW) So what is the holdup?

If they pick some damn vampire actor again, I'm going to the deli across the street from my apartment and turning over the magazine rack. Seriously.

On to more pleasant topics, here is a cartoon about witches who eat children. So she's heading out to pick up lunch with an empty stroller. Get it? What's funnier than eating children?
(Note to children reading this blog: Ask your parents if they have updated the anti-witch security devices in your home. Firefighters recommend changing the batteries on January 1st each year.)

Finally, from the archival vault (trash bags in my basement) comes this ancient Sunday comic from October of 1998. This was before I started coloring on computer, hence the colour de crapola, as they say in French. You can click on it to achieve biggerness, which will enable you to read it more good.














Dogs are so cute. By the way, where can I get one of these for my very own?


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The Hole Thing

A fine website answering to the name "The Comics Journal," has published a three-part interview of myself. Against my innate sense of modesty and with great shame, I provide you here below with links to the whole shebang. WARNING: This interview is NOT appropriate for people not able to read.
Part 1 of 3

Part 2

Part 3



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