Trick or Treat 2

Another Happy Halloween Ten of a Kind! (With a shout-out to everyone's favorite Little Stuffed Bull)

(Last year's Trick or Treat ten of a Kind is here!)

Halloween

Bizarro is brought to you today by Pumpkin
Abuse.

It is Halloween weekend and if I were a 10-year-old child I'd be getting my costume ready for trick-or-treating. But since I am ancient and my sciatica is acting up, I'll probably stay in with my nurse and have her rub liniment on my lower back. Did I mention my nurse is a 24-year-old student from Sweden?

A few years ago, I started doing "Scariest Halloween Costumes of (year)" Sunday cartoons and have kept that tradition. Here today are all of them since 2007 when I began.

(click the cartoon images for a biggerer view)
As you can see, the first one is graphically fairly simple in comparison to what I did in later years. In this one I referred to global warming, the lead toys from China scandal, NFL quarterback Michael Vick's dog fighting problems, more about the environment with the over-zealous breeders, and the consistently abhorrent anti-role models, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Strangely, I got the most hate mail about the population crisis. Many fundamentalist Christians took exception to my contradiction of their lord's instructions to "be fruitful and multiply." I still contend He was talking about practicing your math skills.

In '08, an election year, I touched on the collapsing economy and blamed it on the Republicans, which everyone but a die-hard Republican would agree with. I also hit the TV writer's strike, which has pretty much been forgotten by now. I expected hate mail about the drunken elephant and got some.

2009 brought the term "Zombie bank" into the popular lexicon, which was a natural for this. It was also the year Kanye West made an ass of himself at the MTV awards (or whatever it was), Michael Jackson died, and Fox and it's minions funded and organized the faux grass-roots protests about health care reform. I got hate mail about the health care reform aspect on this one, of course.

This year's cartoon does not touch on political events at all, though there were plenty of easy targets. The Fox News funded and organized, faux grass-roots Tea Baggers would have been an obvious choice but American politics have become so incredible incendiary and stupid that I no longer bother to editorialize. (Except here on this blog.) I've decided that such things do nothing to change anyone's mind and amid the current epidemic of idiocy, I might get tarred and feathered or lynched. Still, I think the three topics I chose are funny, especially the little Jesse James Nazi kid with his toy chopper bike. Although Jay Leno stealing candy from a baby makes me smile, too. I can't imagine what hate mail I could get from this one but I'm often surprised. I'll keep you updated.

Have fun on Halloween this year and be safe. Unless being safe ruins your fun, in which case you should just go for it. What's a few less humans on a crowded planet?

Friday Night Fights: Batman vs. Solomon Grundy

From Batman: The Long Halloween #2 (1996). Art by Tim Sale. Story by Jeph Loeb. Colors by Gregory Wright. Letters by Richard Starking. (click pics for larger)

Jamming something up the nose? It's a Free-for-All!

Amazon Top 50

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


1 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid 5: The Ugly Truth *
2 (+6). Superman: Earth One *
3 (+4). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
4 (-1). Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
5 (+1). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
6 (-1). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
7 (-3). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness
8 (-6). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
9 (+1). The Walking Dead, Book 6 *
10 (+4). Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale *
11 (-2). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 7: Twilight
12 (-1). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
13 (+11). 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective
14 (-1). Odd Is on Our Side
15 (+7). Walking Dead Volume 13 *
16 (+13). Bloom County: The Complete Library Volume 3
17 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books
18 (-2). Big Nate: From the Top
19 (+7). Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life
20 (-8). X'ed Out
21 (+13). Y The Last Man Deluxe Edition Book Four
22 (+10). Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts
23 (-3). Walking Dead Volume 12
24 (-5). X-Men: Second Coming
25 (-4). Dork Diaries 2: Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
26 (+1). Dilbert: 2011 Day-to-Day Calendar
27 (+14). The Walking Dead Book 5
28 (-10). Witch & Wizard: Battle for Shadowland
29 (+2). The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain
30 (+12). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
31 (+6). The Adventures of Unemployed Man
32 (N). Luthor
33 (R). The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye
34 (-19). Parker: The Outfit
35 (-5). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
36 (R). Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill
37 (-14). The Adventures of Ook and Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future
38 (N). Negima! 28
39 (R). Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 6: Retreat
40 (-2). Watchmen
41 (-5). The Walking Dead Volume 11: Fear The Hunters
42 (+4). The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
43 (-6). Kick-Ass
44 (N). xxxHOLiC 16
45 (N). Bad Kitty Gets a Bath
46 (R). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
47 (+2). The Cloud Searchers (Amulet)
48 (R). Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days
49 (-14). The Complete Peanuts Boxed Set 1975-1978 (Vol. 13-14)
50 (-6). Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s *


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:

* No, your eyes do not deceive you Superman: Earth One, the OGN rebooting Superman for the modern era by JMS & Shane Davis, bounces up ahead of Scott Pilgrim to land at #2. Even more impressive, it hits #20 on the overall list, and this in the week before it is available through bookstores. Superman still cannot beat The Wimpy Kid though, which slips a smidge to #4 on the overall list.

* On the eve of the debut of the AMC television series, collections of The Walking Dead take up a full nine of the slots in the top fifty.

* The hardcover of Azzarello & Bermejo's Luthor is the highest debut this week. The other debuts are xxxHOLiC vol. 6, Negima! 28 and Bad Kitty Gets a Bath.

* This is the first time I remember that there hasn't been a Batman book in the top fifty since I started monitoring these rankings in early 2009.

* The bottom of the list this week is #2,556 overall.

Kayli Fanart!

Hey Folks,

Lane Terasaki, a long time follower of our comic and artist himself, recently sent us a piece he did of Kayli that Genevieve and I really dig. We're putting it up here for the rest of you to check out. Check out more of Lane's art at his Deviant Art site! Thanks again, Lane!

Ever notice that wherever Kayli goes, it's always very cold?

- Joseph

Italian Spiderman

I posted this video on this blog a couple of years ago but it definitely bears repeating. Enjoy.

Pow Sex Tights

Bizarro is brought to you today by Ovum Racists.

Two super hero cartoons today, because I'm still in the super hero mode to load up my new book of Bizarro super hero cartoons coming out next spring, which I've talked about enough on this blog to make me vomit. Why do I keep talking about it? I don't know, maybe I'm hoping that it will sell more than a dozen copies and break all previous records for Bizarro books.

As much as it makes my gout flare up to admit it, I was a kid back in the late '60s when the original Batman TV show aired. If you've never seen it, do so. It was a gem. It was The Simpsons of its day in the sense that it ran in prime time, had big ratings, and was so quirky that celebrities were lining up to do cameos on it. But that's not important right now. What's important is that they had several corny fight scenes in each show, during which a giant "Pow!" or "Zok!" or "Bap!" was written across the screen in big comic book lettering. Just like in this cartoon, which is why I like it. Now you can stop wondering.

And what a great segue it was to have the word "wondering" in that last sentence. Because now we will talk about Wonder Woman. Wow. What a babe. In the late 60s, porn was not readily available to young boys such as myself, so Wonder Woman comic books were the object of my desires and fantasies. Oh, to be tied up by her magic lasso and...perhaps I'll leave the details for another blog, one about embarrassing personal sexual fantasies involving fictional Amazonian cartoon characters.

So here is Wonder Woman shopping for threads and it brings to mind another cartoon I did about super hero fashion, fresh from the dank archives of Bizarro International Headquarters.

Have a super day.

Ten Random Things About Comics

It's all the rage this week to make up lists of ten things about comics. And it's fun to rant. So...

1. Everybody reads comics. Well, nearly everybody. They may not be reading traditional comic books, but they will read collections of their favorite comic strips; or one or two Web comics; or the latest graphic novel reviewed by the New York Times; or the comic that an upcoming movie is based on; or a comic purportedly written by their favorite prose novelist; or, well, you get the idea. The notion that comics readership is limited to one particular demographic (be it 40-year-old super-hero fans or 15-year-old manga fans) is just not true.

2. Not all of those people pay for the comics they read. They borrow them from the library, or a friend. They read their favorite Web comics online. I've even heard that some people download comics through means of dubious legality. Most people enjoy comics, but not enough to pay for them more than occasionally.

3. The big two publishers cater to a particular demographic because those are the people who continue to pay for their comics. If you want to see a Supergirl comic written for tween girls, people are going to actually have to buy it when it is published. If not, you're just going to get yet another iteration of Secret Civil World War Blackest Infinite Crisis War.

4. The big two have created an event mentality that hinders their ability to successfully launch new titles. When you send out the message that "these comics 'matter,'" that also sends out the message that "these other comics don't 'matter.'" Take for example Marvel's new all-ages Thor: The Mighty Avenger; just about anyone who has actually read it agrees that it is very good, perhaps even wonderful. But hardly anyone reads it, because it's not the 'real' Thor, and the out-of-continuity stories don't 'matter.' It also doesn't help that there are something like five or six different Thor comics being published every month right now, which leads us to the next point:

5. The big two are flooding the market with titles, which has destroyed the mid-list and hinders their ability to successfully launch new titles. If one Deadpool book is selling moderately well, then why not have five Deadpool books? Well, because 50,000 people copies sold of one Deadpool comic does not equate to 250,000 copies sold of five Deadpool comics; you'll actually be lucky to get 100,000 sold. (I just made those numbers up; I'm too lazy to look up actual sales numbers.) That equates to money that comics buyers could be spending on something else; it also equates to an opportunity cost in not publishing something else. The only comics properties that should be carrying more than one title are Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and maybe X-Men; and those should cap out at two titles for each.

6. The manga boom is over, and it's not coming back. It was killed by a flood of titles. And returns. A few popular titles like Naruto continue to sell well, but it's mostly transformed into another niche market. Not that there's anything wring with niche markets; as long as I can still get Yotsuba&!, or stuff by Jiro Taniguchi, and Fantagraphics is willing to put out a nice hardcover of Moto Hagio's stuff, I'm happy.

7. The best way to sell comics to a general audience is to have a tie-in to some other media, preferably a movie. Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Scott Pilgrim. The Walking Dead. Kick-Ass. Buffy. Etc. Mostly this means "Well-regarded comic becomes a movie," and not "make a comic based on a movie property." Or (in the case of Buffy), "creator with a rabid fan base continues his creation in comics form." (Note the necessity of the term 'rabid.')

8. Some of the biggest comics series are not sold primarily (or at all) through Diamond. Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Amulet. Witch & Wizard. Ook & Gluk. Did you see those at your local comics store? Probably not. But they're comics for kids that are selling quite well in the bookstore market.

9. Digital is the wave of the future for the traditional comic book. It's simple math: when you cut out printing and distribution costs, you need only sell half as many comics to make the same profit digitally. (Alternately, cut your prince in half, and make more money in volume.) With digital distribution, your comic is always available, and you can get long-tail effects. In five to ten years, look for the digital market to replace the traditional floppy market. Absurd you say? I'm sure they thought the same at Tower Records. Or Blockbuster.

10. People will continue to create comics, whether or not there is an industry to support them. Just like people will continue to write and perform music whether or not there is a record industry. We just had a 24 Hour Comics Day event at the library where I work, and I had the pleasure of sharing a room with thirty mostly college-age kids all making comics. Most have no desire to be professional comics creators, but they do have a desire for self-expression through art. And with the Internet, they can share their work with others. The currency they'll trade in is attention (and for those who are profit-minded, they'll find that attention translates to sales).

Fun Web Site

Today I'd like to mention a favorite web site of mine. It's called Fwithpeople.com and every day some guy named Doug writes emails back and forth with an unsuspecting person, just to be an idiot and "F" with them. It's not as cruel as it sounds (or as you might hope it would be if you're a heartless "A" hole) but it's funny. I always get a smile or six from it so I wanted to share.

Directions:
1. click link
2. read some of it
3. bookmark
4. repeat

http://fwithpeople.com/


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Cool Hot Deal

If you find yourself reading this blog regularly and saying quietly within your own mind something like, "That Piraro has real class. I'll bet he'd never sell out," you'd be wrong.

In fact, I recently discovered a need within my own personal life for a space heater. A few years ago I need bar stools, but at the moment, I have plenty of those and it happens to be a space heater that is the object of my desire. Sometimes the space I am occupying is colder than I'd like so a device that would heat that space would be perfect. Then I remembered that a pretty immense website called CSN, which features like 200 different stores that sell just about everything on earth, asked me if I would review a product of theirs. I looked through their site and what do you know? Yes, they have space heaters, a gazillion of them, so I asked them to send one to me to review. The cool part of this transaction is that I get to keep it! It's one of the small perks I get from having a blog that I never make money from. Maybe the only perk, come to think of it. (Anyone interested in having me review health insurance?)

Of course, I could have chosen a clock that has something to do with the water, but I chose a space heater. I just hope it heats small spaces, like the one I'm sitting in now, and not all of space. Like where the planets float. That could be a problem.

I'll let you know which one it does after it arrives.

Meta 4 #3 (of 5)

Meta 4 #3 (of 5)
Oct 2010 | 26 pages | CBR | 20 MB
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Metalocalypse Dethlok #1

Metalocalypse Dethlok #1
Oct 2010 | 27 pages | CBR | 13 MB
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The Incredibles #14

The Incredibles #14
Sep 2010 | 29 pages | CBR | 18.8 MB
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Scalped #41

Scalped #41
Oct 2010 | 30 pages | CBR | 15.8 MB
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Neonomicon #2

Neonomicon #2
Aug 2010 | 30 pages | CBR | 23 MB
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Cars - The Adventures of Tow Mater #3

Cars - The Adventures of Tow Mater #3
Sep 2010 | 28 pages | CBR | 18.4 MB
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Grimm Fairy Tales Inferno #4

Grimm Fairy Tales Inferno #4
Sep 2010 | 32 pages | CBR | 22.3 MB
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Grimm Fairy Tales #51

Grimm Fairy Tales #51
Sep 2010 | 37 pages | CBR | 23.2 MB
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JSA All-Stars #11

JSA All-Stars #11
Dec 2010 | 34 pages | CBR | 24.9 MB
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Unknown Soldier #24

Unknown Soldier #24
Nov 2010 | 37 pages | CBR | 21 MB
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Doom Patrol Vol.5 #15

Doom Patrol Vol.5 #15
Dec 2010 | 36 pages | CBR | 21.6 MB
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Madame Xanadu #27

Madame Xanadu #27
Nov 2010 | 37 pages | CBR | 21.6 MB
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REBELS #21

REBELS #21
Dec 2010 | 26 pages | CBR | 21.1 MB
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Superman - The Last Family of Krypton #3 (of 3)

Superman - The Last Family of Krypton #3 (of 3)
Dec 2010 | 60 pages | CBR | 32.2 MB
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Red Hood - The Lost Days #5 (of 6)

Red Hood - The Lost Days #5 (of 6)
Dec 2010 | 25 pages | CBR | 10.4 MB
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Batman - Odyssey #4 (of 13)

Batman - Odyssey #4 (of 13)
Dec 2010 | 33 pages | CBR | 18.6
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Zilla Math Cell Phone

Bizarro is brought to you today by No One Zilla.

Today is a special presentation of Unusual Mail From Unusual Readers. The day after the Godzilla cartoon at left ran in the paper, I was copied on the following email, sent to the Tacoma News Tribune editor. The author allowed that I may post this letter here as long as I do not edit it in any way, including his "job title."

October 19, 2010

Dear Tacoma News Tribune Editors:

I would like to correct a misperception that Dan Piraro, creator of the
"Bizarro" comic panel, has introduced with his 10/18/10 panel. In it he shows a
Godzillan instructor before a blackboard on which the populations of Tokyo and
Wyoming are written (12,790,000 and 493,782, respectively), explaining to a
couple of lecture attendees that "As you can see, the caloric density of Tokyo
is more than two dozen times that of the entire state of Wyoming." While
technically correct, this vastly understates Tokyo's superiority as a homo
sapien meat source over Wyoming. Piraro has made the simple error of dividing
the two populations to obtain his "two dozen times" figure. Caloric density,
however, is a function of food source population divided by the food source's
geographical area. Tokyo covers 844 square miles while Wyoming covers 97,814
square miles, meaning that the caloric densities of Tokyo and Wyoming are 15,154
humans per square mile and 5 humans per square mile, respectively. Thus the
caloric density of Tokyo is more than 3,000 or 250 dozen times that of Wyoming,
not 24 or two dozen as Piraro states. For any species dependent in whole or
part on human flesh for its survival, that is a huge difference. (Why the
difference? Overconsumption of human stock in Wyoming by Tyrannosaurus Dick.)
I don't wish to unduly criticize Dan Piraro, who is a fine cartoonist, but I'm
sure that if Gary Larson were still covering the animal husbandry beat, this
error would not have crept into the pages of your newspaper. I hope you will
publish this letter to properly inform your readers of Tokyo's true magnificence
as a food source. To reassure readers unable to afford transoceanic passage to
Japan, I note that the caloric densities of Tacoma and Seattle are 4,107 and
6,799 humans per square mile, respectively. While Seattle-area metropolises
don't offer as calorie-abundant an environment as Tokyo, Seattleites' rich diet
of liberal hypocrisy, complacency, and arrogance make them some of the tastiest
eating on the planet.

Sincerely,
Brett Landgraf
The Pink Nigger

His math is correct, of course, and I regret the error. Mr. Landgraf and I have corresponded on another occasion, which I will not post in its entirety here, in which he explained why he insists on being called "The Pink Nigger." His answer, paraphrased, is that his skin is pink (caucasian) and he is, at least in part, a slave to property and labor markets. My guess is that he is fiercely libertarian, but I could be wrong. Whatever his philosophy, I found his letter amusing and wanted to share. (Note: I'm not one to believe that words are taboo, only context. If I thought his use of "nigger" was meant to promote racism, I wouldn't have posted it here.)

On to the next cartoon: I thought of this gag when trapped in public on my cell phone during a difficult conversation. I wanted to scream but did not wish to abuse the others around me. And no, it was not a conversation with CHNW.

For today's blast from the Bizarro archives, click on the No One Zilla link in the first sentence of this post.

Cheers. (salutation, not sit-com)



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Kick-Ass Comics #2,3,4,5,6 [REQUEST]

Kick-Ass Comics #2,3,4,5,6
5 Issues | CBR, CBZ | 107.3 MB

Requests from Arrow, Tobias, chase, zane
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Brightest Day #11

Brightest Day #11
Dec 2010 | 23 pages | CBR | 12.1 MB
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Kilroy Is Here #7

Kilroy Is Here #7
1996 | 37 pages | CBR | 18.6 MB
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Spawn #199

Spawn #199
Sep 2010 | 30 pages | CBR | 27.2 MB
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The Stuff of Legend - The Jungle #2 (of 4)

The Stuff of Legend - The Jungle #2 (of 4)
36 pages | 2010 | CBZ | 27 MB
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The Darkness - Four Horsemen #2 (of 4)

The Darkness - Four Horsemen #2 (of 4)
Sep 2010 | 33 pages | CBR | 14.5 MB
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