Shootin' Thangs

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Arrogant A--hole Fashions of Beverly Hills.

I usually feature the comic that ran in papers one week previous to a given date, but I'm not that fond of the one I ran last week on this day, so I'm posting this one instead.

This was not published in Bizarro, but will be published in a Swedish comic book doing an issue about biodiversity. They asked me to do a full-page comic on the theme of endangered species and this is what I submitted.

If you're very young or extremely poorly educated, you may not recognize the literary conceit. It is from old Agatha Christie-style crime novels (Perhaps Christie invented this motiff, I dunno) where the British constable or inspector calls all the suspects from the book (or movie) into a lavish Victorian drawing room and announces he knows who the killer is and that he is in this room. Everyone in attendance gasps, the camera pans around the room as each face looks suspiciously at the others (unless it's a book, in which case there are no cameras or faces, you just have to imagine it, which is a lot of brain effort and could account for why books are less popular than movies in some areas of our country, especially the ones with large Palin rallies) then the inspector recounts the crime step-by-step and eventually exposes the killer.

At this point, everyone grabs the killer and subdues him, or he darts for a door and a bobby (British for "cop") is waiting on the other side to arrest him. This is the polite and bloodless (British for "non-American") way the British catch criminals.

If this method were tried in modern-day America, the detective would call everyone into a bleak white, flourescent-lit room full of folding chairs and lock the doors. He would shout for all the motherf-ckers to shut the f-ck up because he knows who the killer is and he's going to pop a cap in his a--. At this point, the killer would produce two large handguns and, rotating his wrists 90º so that the guns were laying over on their sides, cross his arms, jump high into the air, and shoot wildly as he summersaulted over the small group of unsavory street scum. People would scatter, guns would be drawn, flashes of gunpowder would fill the room, and a car would crash through a wall. The killer would jump onto the hood and, while hanging onto the windshield wipers with the toes of his shoes, spray the room with bullets, causing an explosion, as the car continued through the next wall, down the hall and into the street for his getaway.

If I were a cop in America, I'd start by keeping an eye on young people with unusual gymnastic skills.