Snow Mysteries

Bizarro is brought to you today by Snow.

It's cold in NYC this week and we had a slight dusting of snow, so I thought I'd drag a few old Bizarros out of the cartoon freezer today. There is something irresistible about snowman gags to cartoonists, and these are some of my favorite gags of any kind.

We begin with this cartoon based on a true story that happened in Cheboygan, Michigan in 1983. It seems that a small group of 9-year-old boys built four snowmen on Thursday, December 15th. When they returned to the site the following day, exactly 27 years ago today, one of the snowmen had been murdered by the other three, their carrot-nose murder weapons still sticking out of the gaping wounds in his chest. By the time the police arrived, an unidentified rabbit had eaten all three of the carrots and left the scene. Authorities arrested the three suspects but they disappeared from lockup over night and have not been seen since. The rabbit, a suspected accomplice, remains at large. Snowman-on-snowman crime, however, is not uncommon and most cases go unsolved.

Our next cartoon features the growing trend among snowpeople toward cosmetic surgery. Though exact statistics are impossible to gather, experts estimate that nearly one quarter of all snowpeople in the U.S. are using elective surgery to make themselves more attractive. Snow cones are a cheap method of breast augmentation and sales of "baby carrots" are up 130% in the past ten years, presumably to achieve a more attractive nose than the traditional full size, adult carrot. Snowmen have been known to use parsnips for penis enlargement, though their proximity to the ground have led to some thefts.

Our last cartoon documents a mystery upon a mystery. Archeologists are still uncertain as to the origins of the large stone heads on Easter Island, and even more mystified by their replacement each winter with big whopping snowman heads. Government officials have declared the island off limits to tourism during these months fearing vandalism of the heads, which are notably more fragile than the stone ones. Samples of the snow are gathered by scientists each year and guarded carefully as they look for clues to its provenance. Theories of the origin of the frozen craniums range from intervention by extraterrestrials with a juvenile sense of humor to ghosts of the children of the indigenous inhabitants who erected the stone heads visible throughout the rest of the year.

If you have a strange winter mystery that you think would make an interesting cartoon, write it on a 3"x5" note card in 200 words or less and mail it to:
Santa Claus
1 North Pole
The Arctic 00001

Stay warm and thirsty, my friends.





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