Sick

Bizarro is brought to you today by Friendly Tongues.

It's been a dark day at Bizarro headquarters. Late last night my computer went into a deep coma. In spite of heroic efforts on my and several Apple expert emergency personnel's part, its brainwaves remain as flat as the top of Rob Blagojevich's head (under the brunette tower of protein.)

Tomorrow it goes into surgery and intensive care. (My computer, not Blagojevich's hair) If you have a god, please say a prayer to him/her/it/them and keep your fingers crossed. I backed everything up recently, so that's good, but it's never recent enough.

Meanwhile, I've lost a lot of recent emails and an entire day of work, so I may not be posting as often in the next few days as I deal with my grief and scramble to recover lost time and work.

Also, I was three or four weeks behind on many emails, so if you sent me something more than a day ago and I have not answered, please resend it. If you are not looking for the answer to an old email, however, please don't add to the smothering heap of laundry I currently have raining down on my head. If you wait a week or two before sending me a new email, it will be much appreciated and will be answered more quickly. Thanks.

Today's cartoon isn't a thigh slapper, but I like the picture. It was fun anthropomorphizing all these birds and think it turned out pretty well.

Christmas Covers - December 17

For each day of December until Christmas I'm featuring a Comic Cover Advent Calendar. Just move your mouse over the image to reveal today's special Holiday comic cover. Click on the image to get a larger version. (If you're on a feed reader you may need to click through to the blog to get it to work.)

Dot wraps her presents on the cover to Little Dot #29.

Come back tomorrow, and every day this month, for a new Christmas cover.


Just 8 more 'get-ups' until Santa!


(2007: Classics Illustrated #53)
(2006: Patrick The Wolf Boy Christmas Special)
(2005: A Patty Cake Christmas)
(2004: Superman #165)

(Polite Dissent's 2008 Comic Book Cover Advent Calendar)
(Brendan McKillip's Comic Advent Calendar 2008)
(Brian Cronin's 2008 Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar)
 

Christmas Covers - December 16

For each day of December until Christmas I'm featuring a Comic Cover Advent Calendar. Just move your mouse over the image to reveal today's special Holiday comic cover. Click on the image to get a larger version. (If you're on a feed reader you may need to click through to the blog to get it to work.)

Montgomery Wart appears to not have learned the lesson about licking cold flagpoles on Mark Martin's cover to Tantalizing Stories #2 (1992).

Come back tomorrow, and every day this month, for a new Christmas cover.


Just 9 more 'get-ups' until Santa!


(2007: Funny Pages vol. 2 #43)
(2006: Katy Keene #33)
(2005: Bone Holiday Special)
(2004: Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #76)

(Polite Dissent's 2008 Comic Book Cover Advent Calendar)
(Brendan McKillip's Comic Advent Calendar 2008)
(Brian Cronin's 2008 Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar)
 

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.)

Book Suggestion

Fairly often, someone will write to me asking how to go about shifting to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. There is tons of info on the web for this, but a good friend of mine has produced a terrific book that has everything you'd need to get started and live the good life.

Both those who are leaning in this direction but have yet to make the leap and those who've been in the camp for a while can find an endless list of helpful resources in this book. Great for holiday gifts.

Buy it here.

Magical Time of Year

Bizarro is brought to you today by The War on Christmas.

Today's cartoon is from this time last year and is one of my favorites. I like the gag but I also like that people on both sides of the holiday fence can relate to it.

Long before I was interested in politics I wondered about the contradiction of "separation of church and state" and national holidays like Xmas. Constitutionally, this is clearly not a "Christian nation," as so many right-wingers are fond of calling it, but at the same time we have many laws and government customs that are based entirely on Christianity. Maybe there is a reason other than the Bible that I'm missing, but why can't a person have more than one legal spouse, as long as all spouses are consenting adults? Why is Xmas a legal holiday for government workers, but Yom Kippur is only a holiday if you're Jewish? And the most significant current example of course, is our denial of basic rights to gay couples.

Each year I get one of those Christmas War emails that people circulate about how "it's a Christmas tree, not a Holiday tree, not a Hannukah bush, not a Quanza" something-or-other... I usually respond by sending to the same list an explanation about the pagan origins of what is now called a Christmas tree. If you're going to be sanctimonious, seems you should at least have the facts.

Most rational people don't take this so-called "war on Christmas" seriously, but those who do fear the loss of their right to use government facilities and funds to celebrate their religion publically. But there are always loopholes. One can always resort to "Mary and the Magic Baby."

Christmas Covers - December 15

For each day of December until Christmas I'm featuring a Comic Cover Advent Calendar. Just move your mouse over the image to reveal today's special Holiday comic cover. Click on the image to get a larger version. (If you're on a feed reader you may need to click through to the blog to get it to work.)

Rudolph helps Santa trim the tree on Rube Grossman's cover to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer #7 (1956).

Come back tomorrow, and every day this month, for a new Christmas cover.


Just 10 more 'get-ups' until Santa!


(2007: Donald Duck & Co. #49/1964)
(2006: 2000 A.D. #763)
(2005: Incredible Hulk #378)
(2004: Batman #45)

(Polite Dissent's 2008 Comic Book Cover Advent Calendar)
(Brendan McKillip's Comic Advent Calendar 2008)
(Brian Cronin's 2008 Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar)