Heavy Metal Magazine Vol.XXXV No.1

Heavy Metal Magazine Vol.XXXV No.1
2011 | 124 pages | PDF | English | 131 MB
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Warlord of Mars #2

Warlord of Mars #2
Dec 2010 | 29 pages | CBZ | 25.4 MB
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Lady Death #0

Lady Death #0
Nov 2010 | 25 pages | CBZ | 24 MB
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Batman 80-Page Giant 2010 (One-Shot)

Batman 80-Page Giant 2010 (One-Shot)
Jan 2011 | 85 pages | 38.2 MB
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2000AD #1712

2000AD #1712
Nov 24, 2010 | 30 pages | CBR | 17.6 MB
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Batwoman #0

Batwoman #0
Jan 2011 | 15 pages | CBZ | 12.8 MB
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Tarot Witch Of The Black Rose #65

Tarot Witch Of The Black Rose #65
Nov 2010 | 37 pages | CBR | 19 MB
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World of Warcraft - Curse of the Worgen #1

World of Warcraft - Curse of the Worgen #1
Jan 2011 | 31 pages | CBR | 33.4 MB
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Kindergarten Lesson

A brilliant, funny, short article by Bill Maher can be found by clicking this link.

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Monkey Covers

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

Sheena fends off a gorilla in her leopard print bathing suit on Dan Zolnerowich's cover to Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #3 (1943).

(Standard disclaimer about gorillas who attack jungle girls not really being monkeys applies.)

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

Wind Spitting

(To see these cartoons bigger, click them. To find this McDonalds cartoon on fine merch, click here.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Childhood Dreams.

Today we have two cartoons about clowns. One from now and one from 1997.

I'm one of those people who think that clowns are creepy as hell. I've never found graphic representations or photos of clowns creepy, just the live version, the person dressed like a psycho getting in your face and trying to make you laugh. Even as a child I instinctively did not trust people in costumes. Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, clowns, you name it. I couldn't help but think that if they meant me no harm they would not be concealing their identity. It's as simple as that.

Ronald McDonald is perhaps the most malevolent clown of all. The fact that the sort of worldwide cruelty and destruction that the McDonald's corporation is responsible for is represented by a clown is like something from a horror movie. They guy owns thousands of things called slaughter houses, for one thing. "Slaughter" isn't a funny word. I wont' go into a lot of detail, but the animal cruelty, environmental destruction and international health crises that are wrought by cheap hamburgers and chicken parts is a holocaust. I know it's the way the world works and it will not likely ever change, I'm just saying it sends chills down my spine.

I drew the McDonalds cartoon shortly after CHNW and I spent the night in an emergency room when she was hit by a NYC cab. Hospital ERs are not fun to draw because they are either incredibly spare and dull, like the doorway I've drawn here, or incredibly complex, like the rest of the rooms full of gadgets and equipment. It's a no-win for an artist.










"Fopah the Clown" is a weird little story about politically correct language. I don't remember why I wrote it or what I was thinking, but I've never been a fan of PC language in general. After seeing it evolve over the past 30+ years, I think it is a great way to act like we're doing something to end discrimination without really doing anything. Seems to be little more than lip service.

I could be wrong and probably am. I'm just one man spitting into the wind on a blog, as usual. Please come back and watch me spit some more next week.

Hope the rest of your weekend is like this.

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Tsar Stars

Bizarro is brought to you today by Tsars.

I've been away from the blog for a few days, I hope you missed me. I missed you in a way that can only be described as "sort of, in an abstract way."

The reason I've been missing this week was because my good friend and colleague, Wayno, was visiting from his hometown of Chugfuggit, Tennessee. We worked together, ate together, drank together, showered together (but in different bathrooms) for three days and right about now he's back in his cabin in the hills and his wife is trying to get the cigar smell out of his clothing. Hahaha. Good luck, Tiffany Chrystal.

I think most people these days spell the word, "czar," but "tsar" is perfectly acceptable and maybe older. I don't really know, but it worked better for this gag because it is a rearrangement of the word "star". I like a reality show where the losers are killed onstage. That's how I roll.

The "seeing-eye man" is a fun gag about a blind dog. Some dogs are actually blind, I used to have one myself, so I'm surprised I didn't get some hate mail from readers who found it insensitive. I have gotten a fair amount of hate mail in the past few days over a couple of other comics, which I will be sharing with you in a post in the very near future.

I got no hate mail about this last cartoon, either. I guess nobody feels sorry for museum busts, like this one of Michael Jackson. That, in itself, makes me feel sorry for them and now I'm sorry I ever did this cartoon. My sincere apologies to any and all busts who read Bizarro. I have betrayed you and I regret it. Please excuse my poor judgment, it won't happen again.

More tomorrow. We've been dumped on by a few thousand tons of snow here in Brooklyn, again. Bizarro International Headquarters is still digging its way out.

To find many fine products with these cartoons on them, just click the cartoon!

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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 (+5). Odd Is on Our Side (Kindle edition)
3 (-). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
4 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
5 (-3). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
6 (-). Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Boxset
7 (+8). Dork Diaries 2 (Kindle edition)
8 (+1). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
9 (+1). Dork Diaries (Kindle edition)
10 (+10). Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books
11 (+1). Walking Dead Volume 13
12 (-4). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
13 (+1). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
14 (-9). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
15 (+2). Big Nate: From the Top
16 (+10). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
17 (+1). V for Vendetta
18 (+23). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
19 (+10). Walking Dead Volume 12
20 (+23). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
21 (+12). Fables Vol. 14: Witches
22 (N). Black Butler, Vol. 4
23 (+19). Superman: Earth One
24 (+8). Dork Diaries 2: Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
25 (+15). The Walking Dead Volume 11: Fear The Hunters
26 (-3). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
27 (-16). Watchmen
28 (+17). Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, Vol. 1 - The Journey Begins
29 (N). Avengers, Vol. 1
30 (-9). Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale
31 (+15). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 7: Twilight
32 (R). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness
33 (N). Naruto, Vol. 50
34 (+5). The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain
35 (-16). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 8: Last Gleaming *
36 (-12). Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
37 (-24). American Born Chinese
38 (-11). The Long Way Home (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 1)
39 (-9). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
40 (-6). The Walking Dead, Book 6
41 (-5). Batman: Year One
42 (-26). 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective
43 (N). Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 24
44 (N). Highschool of the Dead, Vol. 1
45 (-23). Scott Pilgrim Volume 5: Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe
46 (R). The Walking Dead, Book 5
47 (-22). Batman: The Killing Joke
48 (+1). Blackest Night
49 (+1). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
50 (R). Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life


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:

* The Wimpy Kid stays on the top once again, and slips a bit more to #67 on the overall chart.

* Odd is on Our Side (Kindle Edition) moves up to #2 on the chart and is the #661 Paid book in the Kindle Store (the print edition of Odd is gone from the chart all together).

* A couple of the college books stay strong (Maus, Persepolis) while others slip, signaling the end of the start of the term.

* The story for Scott Pilgrim remains the same as last week: The box set remains strong, while individual volumes continue to be (relatively) weak, all in the bottom half of the chart.

* Three manga titles debut this week: the latest Black Butler and Naruto; and the first Highschool of the Dead volume. It's pretty rare for a first volume of a manga series to chart.

* The bottom of the top 50 chart is a relatively healthy #2,674 overall.

Blissfully Unaware...

In the last poll, you thought Nut and Poo will...

escape! (58%)
be enslaved (16%)
be saved (16%)
be separated (16%)

Good to see you want Poo to regain freedom... but is it in the cards?

Spider Person

Bizarro is brought to you today by Heavy Traffic.

I've never held a tarantula, but I used to see them in the wild every now and then when I lived in Oklahoma and Texas. The first time I ever saw one was in 1963 when my dad came home from the golf course with one in a paper bag. He and his golfing buddies had seen it on the course and coaxed it into a small paper bag, like the kind they give you when you buy a pack of gum. (Dad had no idea at the time that they could jump many feet into the air.) He brought it home, called the kids out into the front yard and let it go. My sisters screamed, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world and wanted to keep it. Apparently we were a typical American family right off of a sit-com from the period, except that we didn't have a black maid. No idea what happened to the tarantula after that, my memory isn't what it used to be. (cough, cough, wheeze, creak)

I'm not all that happy with the bulldog-man's line here but it was the best I could come up with when I drew it. Now I think, "What's your tarantula's name?" would have been funnier.

Here's a guy who only wants to be awakened for food, thus assuring him a long nap. They don't serve food on airplanes anymore, unless the flight is overseas (and even then you may not be willing to call what they serve "food") or if you're up front in Snooty Class. I'd like to suggest that right now, all of us who are relegated to flying coach send out very bad vibes to everyone who flies First Class. Just take a moment to close your eyes and hate them and wish them ill fortune. It won't bother them in the least and they'll never even know we did it, but it might make us feel better.

I admit that there have been a ton of eye doctor jokes with funny messages in the eye chart. I've done a few myself. But something about this one made me feel it was different enough to warrant dusting off the motif again so here it is. All he wants is a laugh. Let's give him one now, shall we? Just throw your head back and laugh like a psychotic sausage vendor.

Now, don't you feel better?

By the way, to buy these cartoons on products, just click the cartoon!!!

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Electric Jesus

For a larger view, click the image.

I had a special request from a beloved reader for this cartoon, so here it is. It's never been published in the U.S. but appeared in some Scandinavian magazines with Bizarro a few years back. Some people find it crass, but it is merely an observation. If Jesus of Nazareth had died in an electric chair, millions of you readers would be wearing tiny gold chair earrings right now.

Hope you enjoy, another post and more cartoons to come later today.

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Punny

(To see this cartoon in all its large, detailed glory, click the caveman's over-hanging brow.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Reader Appreciation.

Here is number 12 in my occasional series of "Sunday Punnies." If you missed the first 11, click here.

The deal is that readers send me their puns and I use some of them for these kinds of cartoons. If you've got a pun that you think might be good, post it in the comments section of this blog or email it to me. My email address can be found on Bizarro.com. Please don't abuse it, its feelings get hurt rather easily.

Rules and notable things:
1. You get no compensation other than the delirious thrill of seeing your idea in the funnies.
2. Tell me what name you want me to sign it with if I pick your pun.
3. It has to be original. Don't be sending me no dang thang you heard at the beauty parlor or on the Interwebs.
4. I will not post the puns that people leave in the comments section, so don't expect to see them listed there and don't be afraid to leave me your name or email or whatever. I'm good at keeping secrets.
5. If you are Joe Flacco, don't bother leaving a pun, I won't use it. You and your Baltimore Ravens knocked the Kansas City Chiefs out of the playoffs and upset my dad.

That's about it. Any time you have a couple minutes to spare and want to LOL outloud, I hope you'll drop by this blog. I post 3 or 4 times a week and feature new cartoons, old ones, odd videos, funny pictures of me and my clan, and peculiar musings from the inner recesses of my brain goo. Thanks for stopping by.

To see some of the past Sunday Punnies, click here. For real this time.

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Monkey Covers

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

Casper gives King Kong a fright on the cover of The Friendly Ghost, Casper #129 (1992).

(Standard disclaimer about witch-grabbing giant gorillas not really being monkeys applies.)

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

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 (-). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
3 (+2). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
4 (-1). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
5 (+6). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
6 (-2). Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Boxset
7 (-1). Odd Is on Our Side (Kindle edition)
8 (+1). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
9 (-1). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
10 (+3). Dork Diaries (Kindle edition)
11 (+12). Watchmen
12 (-5). Walking Dead Volume 13
13 (+11). American Born Chinese
14 (+8). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
15 (-3). Dork Diaries 2 (Kindle edition)
16 (R). 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective
17 (+10). Big Nate: From the Top
18 (+8). V for Vendetta
19 (+25). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 8: Last Gleaming *
20 (+9). Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books
21 (-7). Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale
22 (-1). Scott Pilgrim Volume 5: Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe
23 (-7). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
24 (-6). Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
25 (+7). Batman: The Killing Joke
26 (-16). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
27 (R). The Long Way Home (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 1)
28 (N). Axe Cop Volume One
29 (+6). Walking Dead Volume 12
30 (-11). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
31 (+5). The Arrival
32 (+2). Dork Diaries 2: Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
33 (-). Fables Vol. 14: Witches
34 (-6). The Walking Dead, Book 6
35 (R). Batman and Robin, Vol. 2: Batman vs. Robin
36 (+14). Batman: Year One
37 (N). New Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis, Vol. 1
38 (R). Predators and Prey (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 5)
39 (-2). The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain
40 (-1). The Walking Dead Volume 11: Fear The Hunters
41 (-11). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
42 (-22). Superman: Earth One
43 (-5). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
44 (-1). Batman: Hush
45 (-14). Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, Vol. 1 - The Journey Begins *
46 (-1). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 7: Twilight
47 (N). Secret Avengers, Vol. 1: Mission to Mars
48 (-). The Walking Dead Book 2
49 (-). Blackest Night
50 (-35). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World


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:

* The Wimpy Kid stays on the top once again, and slips a bit more to #56 on the overall chart.

* The bi-annual college course assault on the chart continues; Understanding Comics moves into the top 10, Watchmen & American Born Chinese move up, but Fun Home takes a bit of a tumble.

* The Scott Pilgrim Box Set remains strong, but individual volumes separate and fall; vol. 2 all the way down to #50 (#2,830 overall), and vol. 3 off of the chart all together.

* Dead Watch: Just seven Walking Dead collections in the top 50 this week, down one from last week.

* Axe Cop is the highest debut this week, and two of Marvel's Avengers hardcovers show up as well.

Thoughts

Bizarro is brought to you today by Free Thinkers.

I've been remiss in my posting this week so here's a batch of cartoons to catch us up. Do we have to discuss them all in detail? I'm not convinced we do.

The fly cartoon that kicks off today's show was very popular with readers according to emails and comments I've received. What can we deduce from this? That my readers are into poop jokes. It makes a cartoonist proud.

Here's a very weird and slightly disturbing cartoon about a pregnant woman. What does it mean? Why does her uterus have a voice mail system? I'd be happy to tell you if I knew.






As a result of many emails from various folks, I do know that this cartoon about a seeing-eye dog for the colorblind is funny albeit totally impossible. Dogs don't see color the way humans do so they would be pretty useless at this task. That's just one of the many reasons this is a cartoon and not an illustration in a medical textbook. Don't take these things so seriously, kids.

Static electricity is always funny, especially when it has to do with embarrassing undergarments. Enough said.









Years ago I had an obese doctor who smoked in the office between seeing patients. You could see him down the hall in his office puffing away. I always thought it was funny. You don't have to actually practice good advice to give it. That's the lesson I hope you take away from this cartoon.

Not that my cartoons are about teaching, they're not. In fact, don't follow any advice I give in a cartoon, I don't want to be responsible for your life. If you can read a cartoon, you have a brain. Learn to use it responsibly and things will go better for you. Most of my readers are already independent thinkers so I realize I'm preaching to the choir. I'm just talking to that one guy somewhere who is taping my cartoons to his walls every day, studying them, trying to spot patterns and messages, devising a path by which to live his life, running a piece of red yarn from one pushpin to another creating a giant mess that will later mystify detectives when they are investigating his gruesome crimes. Yes, you know who you are. Stop it.
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Conway

A classic comedy sketch from a true genius, Tim Conway.

In the Shit House

Last week, readers thought Nut and Poo...

make good lovers (52%)

are gross (33%)

won't last (18%)

are a cute pair (16%)

I love hearing your opinions, even though a third of you think Poo and Nut are gross. I guess they are. Maybe we should check in with Robot and Unicorn soon.

Pooh Talk

(For a big, whopping view of this cartoon, click on Pooh's honey pot.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by the Human Heart.

I don't normally post my Sunday cartoons until later in the week, but this one was so popular that I decided to chuck it up on the Interwebs a bit sooner. This was a collaborative effort between my buddy, Cliff, and I . He suggested the pun, "Edgar Allan Pooh," and I came up with a way to portray it.

My chosen vehicle, of course, is from Edgar Allan Poe's story, The Tell-Tale Heart, in which the narrator kills his roommate because his gooey eye creeps him out and buries him beneath the floorboards of his house. When the cops come over to chat with him about the disappearance of his roomie, he arrogantly invites them in to sit down just above the hidden body, believing he is so clever he can never be caught. He clearly had not seen a single episode of CSI, where they can catch you because you left behind a mite from your eyelash. (Sidenote: If his roommate had been CSI's David Caruso, I could totally understand his behavior. That guy creeps me out more than a hairy, talking mole.)

SPOILER: Anyway, he starts to go nuts (like he wasn't already) and thinks he hears the corpse's heart beating beneath the floor. He thinks the cops can hear it, too, and confesses. I've often wondered how he could think he was so clever in hiding his crime when the thing would begin to stink to high heaven in a day or so but whatever.

The truth is that something very similar to this cartoon actually happened in A. A. Milne's original manuscript for The House at Pooh Corner in 1928. Pooh was quite naturally creeped out by Eeyore's nailed-on tail and becomes obsessed with it. In a fit of hyperactivity brought on by a weekend honey binge, Pooh caves in Eeyore's head with the honey jar and buries him beneath the floorboards.

Believing this would damage the book's "cute quotient," editors removed this episode from the final book.

Video Fun

I'll post a regular entry tomorrow, but for today I wanted to share this video which gave me a big chuckle.

Amazon Top 50 of 2010: Graphs

It's a little later than I promised, but here are a few graphs looking at the position of some series on the Amazon Top 50 charts during 2010:

(You should be able to click on a graph to get a larger version.)

(Remember, a title in position 1 on the chart gets a score of 50, so higher number = higher on the graph = better.)

Scott Pilgrim:

This graph is fairly typical for a franchise with a movie based on it. Interest in Scott Pilgrim starts in March, then intensifies in June. Unfortunately, June is also when Amazon decides to reclassify vols 4 & 5 as not being graphic novels for a time. A sizable discount keeps interest high through the autumn, until November when prices return to normal Amazon levels and interest softens a bit.


Diary of a Wimpy Kid:

This graph is for the raining king of Amazon graphic novels, Diary of a Wimpy Kid.This was another franchise that was a victim of an Amazon reclassification, as three of the titles disappear in late April. Volume 5 was introduced as a pre-order in March, and by August it was ensconced at the top of the chart where it has stuck around ever since.


The Walking Dead:

The Walking Dead got a big boost from the television series. Unlike our previous two franchises, there are many more collected volumes and many more ways of purchasing the same story (trade paperbacks, hardcovers, and the compendium). Thus we see the growing interest taking the form of a greater density of titles on the chart, even as no single volume ever dominates.


Maus:

Finally here's Maus. Even with its collected editions over twenty years old, it gets periodic interest in January and September due to its widespread use as a text in college courses.

Big

Bizarro is brought to you today by Fairy Tales.

My weekend post is late, I'm sorry for the three or four of you who wait for these things. For the rest of you who just happen by now and then, ignore everything up to this point.

It is well documented on this blog how I feel about reality TV. I don't just think it is awful, I think it is ruining the world in the way that Baptists thought rock and roll was ruining the world in the 50s and Sarah Palin thinks that intellect and reason are ruining the world today.

But as they say in Brooklyn, whatayagonnado? As long as humans run the world we can expect a never-ending wave a classy quality.

Here's a little cartoon about a couple of mosquitoes. I'd like to apologize to my readers whose lives really do suck and this cartoon was but another painful reminder. You see, to a mosquito, sucking is a good thing. Whether you like or dislike this cartoon, take it up with my bodyguard, Big Rey, who thought it up. I didn't want to print it, but I hate to see a grown man cry. Especially one who has grown to the size of Big Rey and is wearing a shoulder holster. It's heartbreaking.










Now we come to my version of a famous fairy tale. I enjoy the visual and the gag well enough, but what really strikes me is the sexual undertones. If that's the old woman who lived in the shoe with so many children she didn't know what to do, and that's their father and he's 8-stories tall, how did they manage to...? You know.

To make this lurid illustration larger, click Lover Boy's little toe.

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Monkey Covers

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

Archie and Jughead are trapped by a gorilla in a phone booth on Stan Goldberg's cover to Archie's Story & Game Digest Magazine #23 (1992).

(Standard disclaimer about escaped gorillas not really being monkeys applies.)

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

Dancing

I am a huge fan of Tom the Dancing Bug and no fan of political correctness, so it seems fitting that I share this week's brilliant TDB with you. Click the image for greater enlargingmentation.

To read the TDB blog, click the offensive word in this sentence: Sometimes I enjoy a cracker with my soup.

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 (+2). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
3 (-1). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
4 (-1). Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Boxset
5 (+11). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
6 (-1). Odd Is on Our Side (Kindle edition)
7 (+7). Walking Dead Volume 13
8 (+2). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
9 (+8). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
10 (+1). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
11 (+10). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
12 (+2). Dork Diaries 2 (Kindle edition)
13 (+4). Dork Diaries (Kindle edition)
14 (+2). Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale
15 (-6). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
16 (-10). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
17 (-5). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness
18 (-5). Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
19 (-4). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
20 (-). Superman: Earth One
21 (-6). Scott Pilgrim Volume 5: Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe
22 (+11). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
23 (+1). Watchmen
24 (+1). American Born Chinese
25 (-18). Dilbert: 2011 Day-to-Day Calendar
26 (+10). V for Vendetta
27 (+3). Big Nate: From the Top
28 (+1). The Walking Dead, Book 6
29 (-10). Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books
30 (-2). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
31 (N). Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, Vol. 1 - The Journey Begins *
32 (+12). Batman: The Killing Joke
33 (-11). Fables Vol. 14: Witches
34 (+1). Dork Diaries 2: Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
35 (-9). Walking Dead Volume 12
36 (+6). The Arrival
37 (-10). The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain
38 (-6). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
39 (-8). The Walking Dead Volume 11: Fear The Hunters
40 (-). Tron: Betrayal
41 (-3). The Walking Dead Book 5
42 (-1). Odd Is on Our Side
43 (+3). Batman: Hush
44 (N). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 8: Last Gleaming *
45 (-11). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 7: Twilight
46 (R). Blankets
47 (R). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
48 (-3). The Walking Dead Book 2
49 (R). Blackest Night
50 (-). Batman: Year One


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:

* The Wimpy Kid stays on the top once again, but again slips, to #50 on the overall chart.

* The college rush continues, with Maus, Persepolis and Fun Home all in the top 10.

* Demand for individual volumes of Scott Pilgrim continue to soften, though the box set remains strong.

* Dead Watch:Eight Walking Dead collections in the top fifty this week, down from nine last week.

* Two new titles debut as pre-orders: Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, Vol. 1 (the only Marvel title on the chart this week); and the final Buffy Season 8 collection.

* The bottom of the list is a distressingly low #4,048 this week.

Confusion

Bizarro is brought to you today by Nothing.

I got a couple of comments from readers who didn't quite get this headache gag. While I fully understand how a person might not understand it, I'm not sure how to explain it. I think it is one of those oddball gags that you either find amusing or you don't. There is no secret to it that you're not seeing, it's just that this guy has a headache and his wife and dog are part of the equation. If you're still out to sea, get married, sit around with your spouse for 10 or 20 years then look at the cartoon again.*

I'd like to say this about the "Backwards Caps" cartoon: I hate backwards caps. Yes, perhaps "hate" is a strong word for how one could feel about a particular fashion, you're right. Okay, I think it is dumb. A baseball cap is designed with a bill to protect your eyes from the sun, not the back of your neck. It's the entire point of its existence. It is like wearing shoes on your hands. However, if you were the only person to wear it backwards, then you're probably just quirky and individual and I admire that. But if you started doing it just because everyone else is, you're just being a sheep. If, on the other hand, you feel confident that you like the way it looks independently and you'd wear it that way even if you had never seen anyone else in the world do it and tourists were asking to take a picture with you because you looked so silly, then it would be wrong for you NOT to wear it backwards just because it was a fad. And if you find that you're just more comfortable looking the same as everyone else, own it, girl, and don't change a thing. There is also no reason in the world why you should care about what I think of your hat stylings.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was wearing what I call "old man hats" a few years before they caught on with youngsters and now they have become a symbol of shallow hipsterism. But I refuse to give it up because I liked them before they became a fad and I still like them. Again, no reason at all you should care.

I hope this has been sufficiently confusing so that you now don't know what the hell to do with your baseball cap. Life is like that and we've all learned a valuable lesson.

And here, to round out our confusion, is a cartoon from 1997 that even I don't understand. I have no idea why it occurred to me or why I thought it was funny but it did and I did and I still do. Figure this one out for yourself, you're on your own.


*I'd like to mention that this cartoon in no way reflects my own marriage to CHNW. We have a ball virtually every day and she gets more adorable and interesting year by year.**

** Yes, she is a regular reader of this blog.

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Prepared

Bizarro is brought to you today by Preparedness.

If your head and eyes are not frozen solid in a single position, move them just an inch or so to the left and see the cartoon there. This will increase your understanding of my next sentence. People liked it.

Sometimes simple ideas work best and this one is a perfect example. I got lots of emails from readers who really liked the "interest-free checking" cartoon. It was the result of a collaboration with my buddy, Andy Cowan, who is a former writer for "Seinfeld". (He was responsible for their most famous episode, in which Kramer is elected Supreme Dictator for Life of all of North and South America, then has the rest of the cast executed. Rent it if you haven't seen it.)

Our next offering today is in the field of locomotive laziness. I think we can agree that the Segway scooter is an odd invention. On a scientific level, it represents an amazing breakthrough in gyroscopic technology as regards ambulation without moving your legs. God forbid we should burn one calorie more than is necessary, that would be unAmerican. But, like trans-gender immigrants, it has had trouble fitting into American society. Segways are not powerful or safe enough to be in traffic and most communities consider them too dangerous to allow on sidewalks, so they're pretty much confined to open fields and empty parking lots.

People with absolutely no sense of vanity occasionally use them for security purposes at malls or airports, but what was once predicted to be the biggest thing since indoor plumbing has mostly become an expensive novelty. I have no compunction about looking ridiculous, so I ride these things any time I can hijack one. I don't own one, of course, but they're fun to buzz around on when you can get hold of one. I kind of feel sorry for them, like trans-gender immigrants.

For some reason, the Interest-Free Checking gag reminded me of an old favorite of mine from 1997, so here it is. Again, I like the simplicity of it. I hope you do, too.

We're expecting another big snow storm tomorrow, so I've got to get to the gun store today and stock up on weapons and ammo in case there is a run on supplies at the corner food shop. Good Americans can never be too prepared.


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