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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THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

So here it is President's Day and Valentine's Day back-to-back. Who can afford all of the presents for both such important holidays, especially in this sluggish economy?!

The solution is to get that special someone (and yourself) a Bizarro iPhone app! Boy, am I excited about it! I've been working for months with some very cool app designers here in NYC and we've come up with a new innovation in the comics-for-phones field!

Previously, with other comics apps, you could only buy a given number of cartoons and cram them into your phone and when you'd seen them all, that was that. Could take you ten minutes, could take you ten years.

With the Bizarro app, a NEW COMIC is added EVERY DAY! (The same comic that appears in newspapers.) PLUS, at any given time there is a YEAR'S ARCHIVE of comics that can be accessed super easy and fast from a handy-dandy calendar page. You can also click to access bio info about me (oh! so funny!), info about Bizarro (more humor!), and a help link if pushing buttons on a phone ends up being more than you can handle. Also, you can shoot an email to your other cool friends who might like this app, and you can leave comments. Last, but not least, you can
click to access this very ever-lovin' blog.

ALL FOR ONLY $1.99 PER YEAR! How can we give all of these laughs, drawings, insights, and life-changing experiences away for only $1.99 per year? I'm not sure, I'll have to ask them about raising the price to something more appropriate, like $10K per week. But for now, the price is DEAD CHEAP, so don't miss it!

As you can see from the graphic below, the home page is super long, so scroll down, amigos!

MAY I READ MORE ABOUT IT NOW?
YES! READ MORE ABOUT IT NOW!





Click it to big it...

Dummy Coughs Up a Gag

Bizarro is brought to you by Dry and Macho.

This is one of my favorite gags of late. Tons of cartoons have been done on ventriloquists, I've done quite a few myself, so the fact that I can still amuse myself with this topic is an achievement.

Notice I left any hint of blood out of this cartoon. If it had been web-only, I might have made it a bloody finger and the dummy might even have made mention of the fact that he was experiencing some anal bleeding. But for newspapers, this tasteful version is more appropriate. And maybe funnier, too.

Recently, I wrote a gag with the word "fart" in it and the crudeness of the word is such an integral part of the humor that no other word will do. But "fart" is prohibited in the newspaper comics world, so I'm out of luck. I'll have to save it for the book of adult cartoons I hope to publish one day soon. If I can find a publisher for it.

FOR ADULTS ONLY!!!!!!!

This is a cartoon that I submitted recently but which was rejected for content. The term "up yours" was considered a little too racy for most newspaper funny pages, so it didn't get published. It was actually written by J.C. Duffy, of The Fusco Brothers and The New Yorker. He didn't have a market for it, so he offered it to me.

I knew it was "iffy" when I drew it, but I hoped "up yours" was innocuous enough to get by. I guess I should have known better. Lord knows what kind of calamity and social decay would have been wrought upon western civilization if this kind of profanity were to be printed in a comic. The body shudders, the mind reels.

Profanity is profanity purely and only because we all agree that it is. If we stop forbidding certain words or phrases, they immediately lose their power. These kinds of words have the magical power to offend simple because we endow them with it. The myth of profanity exists purely because we believe in it, which, in my opinion, is archaic.

I've never studied the subject, but my brain tells me this likely started ages ago when people were more ridiculously superstitious (I say "more" because people are still superstitious, but we weed certain traditional taboos out over the centuries and tell ourselves we're not) and they feared that saying certain things about god would bring his wrath down upon us. (I know, some people still believe that.)

From there, I suspect we added certain sexually-loaded language to the list, fearing that if we spoke these kinds of words, orgies would break out and society would collapse. I know from personal experience that there are people living in the United States of America in the 21st century who actually fear that if their children hear (or read) about homosexuality, they will become homosexual. These are people with jobs and college educations and drivers licenses.

Personally, I think it is all a lot of hooey. When I was raising my daughters, they were not denied knowledge of profanity, but told that certain words and phrases were off limits only until they were old enough to understand the social implications and use them appropriately. I didn't want my six-year-old using language that other people would use to make inaccurate assumptions about their character.

Not surprisingly, this worked. They weren't forbidden from knowing or uttering these things, they were simply warned of other people's reactions to them if they did and asked to wait until they fully understood this concept before they talked that way. Both are now well-rounded, happy adults. Their brains didn't explode.

I also did this with all matters of sexuality, illegal drugs, manners of dress, etc. If you tell your kids the truth and give them good, factual information on which to make their decisions, they tend to make the right decisions. Imagine that.

I could go on and on about the myth of profanity, but it wouldn't make any difference, so f*ck it.

I hope you like this cartoon, as a person who hates doing laundry, I got a chuckle out of it.

X-Ray Specks

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Perfect Holiday Gifts.

When I was a kid, it was a somewhat common element of suspense stories to have a guy handcuffed to an important briefcase. He was usually some hotshot spy or secret agent and there would invariably be a scene where he'd have to fight off villains while wearing the breifcase. When he was caught, of course, there was the tension of them threatening to chop his hand off to get the case, as if just cutting open the case were not an option.

While going through airport security last month, taking off my flipflops (because flipflop-shaped bombs and guns are so common), I thought of this image. I assumed the days of this kind of courier were over because of 9/11, but since this cartoon appeared in newspapers a week ago, I've heard from four different agencies/people that actually do this for a living and have this problem. They've described various strange solutions, one of them said that in a foreign country he was forced to check the case and ride the conveyor belt through the luggage tunnels to reach the plane.

As a bonus chuckle, here is a sketch for another cartoon I did a few years ago on this same theme, which is too adult for Bizarro, but not filthy enough for adult magazines. Thus, this meager blog is it's world premier.

(As always, click the cartoon to enlargerize.)

Naughty Potato

Bizarro is brought to you today by Transvestite Comics.

I'll be honest, I'm not crazy about this cartoon. I like the idea of playing around with cartoon logic within a cartoon, but I don't think this one is particularly successful. I hope some readers liked it, though. I'm not always a good judge of what people will like.

So instead, I'll offer you another one of my adult cartoons. The cartoon linked below has never been published anywhere, so this is the first time anyone other than the cartoon editor at Playboy, my wife, or I have seen it.

I used to publish cartoons in Playboy a few years ago, I think there were six or eight over the course of a year and a half, maybe. I stopped submitting because, oddly enough, they were too restrictive. Hefner still vets all the cartoons that go into the magazine and he's really picky. He wants the women to be hot in the Playboy sense, so you can't do a joke that features fat women, old women, creepy women, ugly women. My "Medusa on a nude beach" cartoon was rejected, for instance. He wants the cartoons to glorify sexual liberation and be the stuff of fantasy, not reality, so there goes any joke about a nagging wife or STDs or transvestites or homosexuality, etc... They can't feature anything about bondage or it can't be exported to Canada, which is why the one below was rejected. The list of "no-nos" goes on and on. After a while, all you're left with is the same dozen subjects you've seen in Playboy for five decades now.

I don't mean to criticize the cartoonists who work and have worked for Playboy. There are many legends among them and thousands of classic cartoons have come from that magazine. My objection is purely about the limitations of subject matter.

This one was submitted before I knew of the "no bondage" themes rule. I like to keep this blog suitable for all ages, so if you're under 18, ask your guardian if you click on Naughty Mr. Potato Head. Or any of the above links, come to think of it.

Hi, Treason!

I know this is crass but it is also true and funny. A good friend of mine and fellow cartoonist, Michael Capozzola, thought up this gag and I created it in Photoshop from a campaign poster I found online.

Regardless of whether you are liberal or conservative, it is impossible to intentionally argue that Sarah Palin is qualified or in any way suitable to be in charge of the most powerful country on earth. Considering McCain's age and health, it is more than irresponsible to choose her for that office, it is treasonous.

Snakes on a Plane

Today's cartoon is brought to you buy Greek Mythological Premises, Inc.

This was neither a Bizarro cartoon, nor one printed in Parade Magazine. I drew this one because I think it's a great joke but never found a place to print it in the U.S. It's been printed in cartoon magazines in Scandinavia, where people do not fear that nudity or sexual humor will lead to the decay of society, but nowhere else that I know of. I show it at comedy shows, as it is one of my favorites from my career and always gets a good laugh.

Taking this premise further, Medusa would also have snakes in her arm pits and on her legs and arms. Gross. And shaving would be even grosser. Let's not talk about it.