Rust

Bizarro is brought to you today by Ironing Man.

A reader wrote to me and suggested a cartoon involving Iron Man's difficulty with water and this is what came of it. I'm particularly proud of the art on this one so click on the image and blow it up right big like to fully peruse it. The only thing I used reference for was Iron Man himself, the rest of it was pulled out of the gooey gray gelatin in my noggin. I get excited by being able to draw something particularly convincing right out of my head. Such is the simple life of the simple-minded artist.

It's the weekend, so this is short and sweet.

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.

Pockets

(click the cartoon above for a bigger Koala)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Tiger Urine.

As I've mentioned many times before and you're sick to death of hearing, I'm publishing a book of Bizarro super hero cartoons next spring. The thing is that even though I've been doing super hero spoofs (what a great word "spoof" is) fairly regularly for 25 years, there still weren't quite enough to fill a book, so I've been writing lots of super hero gags in the past couple/three months to fill out the quota. Some of my friends and collaborators have been good enough to send me their super hero ideas, too. Thanks for all the help.

I like the idiocy of a super hero who carries a fanny pack in case there might be something in it that can help in a crisis, and I really like the perspective I drew this from. The windows in the pink building get pretty wonky toward the top, they're not really in correct perspective at that point, but I drew this out of my head without reference, rulers or straightedges of any kind, so I'm giving my self a break. Maybe I'll fix it for the book. Yes, I'm just that anal.

Cuss Bus Pink

Bizarro is brought to you today by Intimacy.

I was at the Ohio State University Festival of Cartoon Art over the weekend and my oh my what a dandy it was. They do this thing every three years, there are only about 250 tickets sold, and the majority of attendees are cartoonists and serious collectors and aficionados. Also in attendance were Matt Groening, Art Spiegelman, Bill Griffith, Roz Chast, Patrick McDonnell, James Sturm, Jen Sorensen, Jan Eliot, Dave Kellett, Tom Gammill, Tony Cochran, and Steve Breen. I'm sure I forgot someone, please forgive me. It was a great honor to be able to tipple with some of my heroes, particularly Groening, Spiegelman, Griffith and Chast – all four are legends of intelligent humor, something that is always in danger of extinction in this reality-show, increasingly lowbrow world.

About this passel of cartoons I've posted today to catch up: "Adult Spelling Bee" is an idea I originally published in the 90s, I think. I came across it in my archives while looking for something else and thought it was a good idea and could be done better with a little tweaking, so I rewrote it a bit and redrew it.

Because I'm compiling cartoons for my super hero collection coming out in the spring, I'm still writing super hero gags. The one about the bus is a fantasy I've had many times. I loathe sitting next to strangers on public transportation, especially talkative ones, and will do almost anything to avoid it. I'm a friendly guy, but I can't stand small talk and think few things are worse than sitting next to a chatty traveler on a long flight.





The Mothman cartoon was a collaboration with my young teenage friend, Victor. It's colored that sickening pink because it was part of a breast cancer awareness project that King Features sponsored. All of King's cartoonists were asked to color their comics pink on Sunday, October 10. They asked me to do the poster for it. I'm not a fan of cancer research and don't like supporting it monetarily because a lot of that money goes toward torturing lab animals. If humans ate vegan diets there would be substantially less cancer, but rather than inconvenience ourselves or stop doing something we enjoy, we torture and kill millions of innocent beings every year in an attempt to find ways to survive eating the wrong foods. In spite of my objections, I participated in this project because it doesn't give money to the cause directly, but mostly reminds people to get screenings so they can catch it early. Just my take on it, whatever.

Thanks to Victor for his help on Mothman, I may recolor it for the book. The pink kind of turns my stomach.

Retro Shrink Arms Nerd Speaker

Bizarro is brought to you today by Adult Speakers.

Gosh, it's good to be back at blogging. I've been busy as a very busy person this past week, out of town, suffering from inoperable hair loss, you name it. But now I'm back and blogging like a mofo, as the kids say.

Clifford, the retro caveman is a suggestion from my good friend, Cliff, so I named the character after him. He doesn't look anything like this, he looks more like this.

This cartoon with the doggy at the shrink was popular among shrinks. Several wrote to me about it which led to long email exchanges about my early childhood and feelings of inadequacy.

The long-armed doctor cartoon is one of those jokes that I wrote just to have a chance to draw a funny picture of a guy with very long arms. Every now and then that happens. Over the many years of my career, since the late 1900s, I've drawn an exaggerated version of just about every body part you can imagine. Except the naughty ones that god did not mean for us to acknowledge in public, of course. If we were not meant to be ashamed of parts of our bodies we wouldn't have been born into this word wearing underwear, I always say.

My last cartoon today is about a super hero calling himself "The Nerd." After this was published I thought I should have had a funnier line as a response. Something like, "I fill the inboxes of criminals with lame jokes." I'll likely change it to something like that for the book of super hero cartoons I have coming out in the spring.

Must get back to deadlines now, dear reader, for I am off to Columbus on Friday for Ohio State University's Festival of Cartoon Art at which I am a speaker.


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Foot Baseball Guano

Bizarro is brought to you today by Lifesaving Fashion.

The gig at Caroline's last night went well, thanks to those of you who came out on a chilly Wednesday night. A few of us headed over to a bar off Times Square afterward for a few drinks; a good time was had by all. Here's a pic from the gig. Not very interesting, I know, but stand-up comedy isn't a particularly visual art form. Maybe this one of me and my mom is better.

Today I get to stay home, which I'm thrilled about. I had to run errands yesterday then get to that show, so I didn't get as much done as I should have. Tomorrow night I'm performing at Bowery Poetry Club (I'll be reading Homer's Iliad and Odyssey in their entirety, which will take in excess of 27 hours not counting bathroom breaks, if my calculations are correct.) Then I have to go out of town this weekend and next weekend, too, so my deadlines are threatening and I'm worried I am in for some late nights.

So let's make it a short post: Shoot yourself in the foot/aim higher. I like the gag, the art is kind of dull, but whatever.
The baseball joke is timely, the pros are in the playoffs right now. I often wonder what those guys are talking about on the mound... "You're sucking, man, if you don't stop throwing puffballs, I'm going to take you out of the game." "Oh, my mistake. You want me to throw it so they don't hit it so much? But that makes the game boring for the fans and it's already a pretty boring sport."

Lastly, here's a cartoon that ran on this day in 1996. I'm not great at math, but that's over ten years ago!

Crime and Sniffing

Bizarro is brought to you today by Other Cool Guys With Hats.

Good lord, this is a busy week at Bizarro International Headquarters. I'm doing a comedy set at Caroline's on Broadway tomorrow night, then Thursday is my birthday (hit "Donate" button at right, send money), then Friday night I'm one of the judges at Literary Death Match (a really unusual show full of improv, you'll likey), then Saturday morning I have to bounce (the young people use this word to mean "go") up to Woodstock Sanctuary to MC our annual Thanksliving dinner on Sunday.

Maybe this don't sound so busy to youse guys, but I normally work 8 or 10 hours each day, seven days a week to get all the crap done that is necessary to keep Bizarro Headquarters afloat. As they say in Alabama, I'm as busy as a racist at a hip-hop festival.

I usually celebrate my birthday each year by dressing like a hobo and hanging around the grounds of the governor's mansion, but this year I'm going to ignore it entirely and stay home. CHNW will likely make my favorite dinner (salt soup!) and we'll watch reruns of Hogan's Heroes. Ja wohl!

To come see me at Caroline's, click here for info.
To come see me at Literary Death Match, click here for info.
To see me at Woodstock Sanctuary, click here but it's sold out so sorry.

The bummer is that this weekend is also the New York Comic Con, which I'd like to drop into but probably won't have time.

Lastly, the old cartoon from my archives today is one that appeared when most people only saw my cartoons in actual newspapers. It doesn't work so well on the Interwebs, but feel free to lick your finger and try it. My favorite part is the last headline on the bottom of the front page. Click the image to read it more big.

Being Super

(Click on Batman's nose to see larger version)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Gas Guzzlers to Die For.

Batman stag party trivia questions and answers:
1. What was Robin's real name? (A: Dick Grayson)
2. What was the most prominent feature of the 1960s TV Batman costume? (A: Adam West's package.)
3. What was Bruce Wayne's middle name? (A: I don't know for sure but it was probably Peter.)

Everyone knows that Dick Grayson was a bit of a dim bulb, otherwise how could Bruce Wayne have ever talked him into going out in public dressed like that? Especially to confront thugs? So this cartoon merely illustrates one of the many problems Batman likely had with Robin in the early days.

The second cartoon of this weekend's 3-pack is a mystery. I don't know what it means, I just thought it was funny having a gingerbread man asking for a job at a service station. It is based on a true story.

Lastly, we have a fun cartoon about aliens eating astronauts. I like to draw alien creatures, I suspect that most cartoonists do, so I like writing cartoons about them. Here is a link to my favorite alien drawing I've ever done, which I used to advertise my Bizarro Trading Cards.

By the way, you can help Batman fight crime by buying Bizarro Trading Cards. A portion of each purchase goes toward supplies needed to draw Batman fighting crime.

World Cup Confession

Bizarro is brought to you today by the Excitement of the World Cup!!!

I've been watching a bit of the World Cup lately and I'll be honest, I'm having trouble getting into it. I used to play a bit of soccer and enjoyed that, but watching it is dull to me. It's the same game as hockey, which I love, except that in hockey the field is small, the players move quickly, there is lots of action and violence and skill and excitement of all kinds every few seconds. In contrast, soccer seems mostly to be a wide-angle view of a huge park with a lot of similarly dressed people jogging in it.

I know this will irritate soccer fans, sorry about that, and it is the most popular sport in the world so clearly I'm missing something that millions of others see. But I cannot lie to myself any longer. It bores me.

One other thing that I find untenable about soccer is the habit of every player on every team to fall to the ground and fake an injury with all the dramatic skill of a professional wrestler every time they are brushed against. This flies in the face of everything my father taught me about sportsmanship. I find it simultaneously insulting and laughable.

That being said, I hope everyone who enjoys soccer has a jazztown hootenanny good time watching the World Cup this year! Seriously. It's always nice when countries can get together and only pretend to hurt each other.

Reality Sux

Bizarro is brought today to you by Colored People.

I was among the zagillions of people who saw the Fantasy Blue People World movie in 3-D and really enjoyed it. I can't say I enjoyed it so much I want to get my ears surgically altered, grow a ponytail and paint myself blue, but the world they created, when experienced in 3-D, was, as the kids say, awesome. I'm not sure how much I would have liked it in 2-D.

The story was nice, too, as I recall.

Which begs the question posed in this cartoon: why don't we have 2D glasses that make reality seem less real? I'd wear them while in line at the DMV. (For foreign readers of this blog, that's the Department of Motor Vehicles, where we stand in line for hours waiting for the person behind the counter to tell us we have forgotten one crucial element of the six forms of I.D. necessary to attain a driver's license.)

Of course, the subtext of this cartoon is that the sort of people who are most adamantly attracted to films such as this are those least attracted to reality. But god bless those kinds of fans, without them, there would be no comics conventions.

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...

Super Homelife

Bizarro is brought to you today by 3 Wishes.

I know it doesn't seem likely that Superman would just be wearing his costume around the house for no reason, but then again, the guy is from outer space, so who knows what he would do?

I like imagining Superman in middle age. Does he get a paunch and start looking like Homer Simpson in a Superman suit? Sure, he's handy as hell when there's a jar to be opened, but as in any marriage, does he eventually get on Lois's nerves? Does she get sick to death of flying through the air tucked under his arm so they can save money on airfare? Does she keep a little piece of kryptonite hidden in her jewelry box to keep him in line when he gets too uppity?

I'm not up on my Superman factoids enough to know if he even ages. I suspect he doesn't, or if he does it is far slower than do humans. So is it like one of those vampire/human marriages (see HBO's Trueblood) where the woman gets old and haggardly and the man always looks like a stud? How's that going to play out? Inevitably, people are going to think he's kissing his mother on the mouth. Eww.

Father's Day

(How big can you make this cartoon? Click the Wolverine's beer label and find out!)

Bizarro on this day is brang to youse by Power Urination.

Regular readers of this blog will recall that I posted this cartoon a few weeks ago beneath a link, but did not include the caption. (I'd link to that now, but I can't find it.) Anyway, I mentioned in that previous post that I thought it was regrettable that this cartoon would run on Father's Day, when it is about men who are estranged from their families. It was completely unintentional.

My Sunday cartoons are drawn about six weeks ahead, so sometime in mid-March I drew the cartoon, inked it, colored it, got it all ready to submit to King Features, then looked on my calendar to see what date was next. Turned out it was Father's Day but by that time it was too late to replace it with something less pointed.

So I'd like to apologize to any estranged fathers out there who found this cartoon to be painful. I got divorced in the mid-nineties when my daughters were 9 and 14, so I know it can be tough. On the bright side, it probably isn't a tough as being a huge, blue furry guy with a face like a baboon's ass. So count your blessings.

As for my own Father's Day, 2009 – My two daughters called and said, "HFD," I called my dad and said, "HFD," he said it back, then I went to work in my garden. For once, it only rained HALF the day, so it was a rousing success by recent standards and I enjoyed it thoroughly. No decorations, no gifts, no songs written for the occasion, no TV specials, no obligatory parties...my kind of holiday!

Wolfy

Bizarro is brought to you by Love Not War.

I don't know much about X-Men, I confess I've not read the comics nor seen the movies. Yet, the imagery on TV is such that I wrote a couple of X-Men jokes lately. This one, and a Sunday cartoon that will run in papers on Father's Day, June 21, then will be discussed on this blog the following Sunday.

Oddly enough, the cartoon that runs on Father's Day is about men estranged from their families. I didn't plan it that way, I just drew the comic, then looked at my calender to see what date it should run. The next Sunday on the schedule was Father's Day. Whoops.

Regarding nail salons, I'm puzzled as to why women spend so much time and money on elaborate nails. Who really notices them besides other women who are interested in nails? Not judging, just wondering. Some of the ladies around my neighborhood have nails so long and elaborately decorated that they seem more appropriate for a Bond villain than a neighborhood mom.

Incredibleness

Bizarro is brought to you today by My Distant Cousins.

There is much we can learn from The Incredible Hulk. We all feel the pressure to be incredible all of the time but for most of us, it just isn't possible. True, some people achieve it – Rush Limbaugh is an incredible jerk all of the time, Paris Hilton is an incredible disappointment to her parents all of the time – but most of us will never reach that level of consistency.

Also like the Hulk, most of us will grow out of our clothes at some point. I can't wear the pants I wore when I was 18 any more than the Hulk can fit into the purple jeans he wore moments before his archenemy made him so angry. And we all lose our cool from time to time and bust up the place. That's just life.

I find comfort in the knowledge that even super heroes like the Incredible Hulk have many of the same problems I do. When I'm feeling embarrassed by my behavior or my clothes are splitting off of my rapidly expanding body, I often sooth myself by remembering that this happens to the Hulk, too. At least I'm not green and my hair is manageable.