Hawah Yee?

Readers, my dear, sweet, innocent, delicious, readers,

I'm far from home at the moment, taking some much-needed time off. If you read my previous posts from the past week or so, you'll see that I'm in Hawaii, where I've been engaged to do a couple of comedy talks about my funny funny eating habits.

To make room in the deadline-riddled landscape that is my daily hell, I had to work 15+ hour days for a week or more and nearly died of death from it. Now I'm in a funky little retro 50s style motel in Maui looking at palm trees outside and CHNW inside, buzzing around the room trying to decide which bikini to wear. Not a bad view wherever I look.

Sorry I won't be posting cartoons until Jan 15. I really enjoy this blog, it's one of my favorite things each day. But as my doctor told me just last month, "If you don't slow down you're going to need a new pair of shoes."

He's from Czech Republic and not all of his sayings translate very well.

Glut?

Here's the Mighty Marvel Checklist for a month in late 1981:



Thirty-four titles for the whole month.

Now in early 2009, Marvel is releasing thirty-one new titles this week (19 comics, 12 collections, not counting multiple cover editions).

In Pie We Trust

(Can't read this cartoon clearly? Click it!)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Last Year.

Another year has passed and I, for one, am happy about it. Personally, I had one of the roughest years ever, but those problems mended as the year went on and the election results in November helped to end it on a positive note.

Here's hoping all of you have a terrific and prosperous 2009, unless, of course, you are a bad person who victimizes others, in which case I hope you get caught.

I know everyone is tired of hearing about politics, so am I, but six weeks ago when I drew this cartoon it seemed a good subject for the year in review. I particularly like the "In Pie We Trust" symbol on the bottom of the first panel. Maybe I'll offer that as a T-shirt at some point.

Monkey Covers

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

Popeye eats his favorite vegetable to put the smack-down on a gorilla on Bud Sagendorf's cover to Popeye #42 (1957).

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


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

Clown Army

Bizarro is brought to you today by Clowns That Kill.

When I was in elementary school in Oklahoma, I played all the sports that were offered. My least favorite was basketball, because we played with an adult-sized ball on and adult-sized court. Most of us couldn't even throw a basketball high enough into the air to hit a backboard, much less accurately enough to get a basket. It would be as if average-sized adults were playing with a ball the size of an airplane tire and the hoop was hanging on the edge of a three-story building. The final scores ended up being more like hockey games than basketball.

A couple of times each year in basketball and other sports, we would play the kids from the local military school. These kids were scary. They were gaunt, tough, bruised, nearly bald, and had the look in their eye of a man on death row who has nothing left to lose. Their gymnasium was cold and dilapidated, and the entire campus was out on the edge of town and felt like you were visiting the set of a teen horror flick. I don't think we ever beat the military school kids at any sport. I remember not wanting to beat them, partly because I felt sorry for them and partly because I didn't want them to tear my head off and spit down my throat.

But the kids from the clown school were easy to beat. They were always tripping over their big, floppy shoes, for one thing, so we had a big advantage right off the bat. In many ways, however, they were even scarier.

APPEARANCES

Time for a quick update of some public appearances coming up this month. Of course, I appear in public several times each week – popping over to the deli across the street, going to the art supply store – but I don't advertise it and nobody cares. The following are advertised appearances about which I hope at least a few people will care.

January 8 and 10, HAWAII!!! Yes, the one in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's a long flight from NYC, but you get a flower necklace when you get there so it's worth it. I'm doing a show for the Vegetarian Society of Hawaii. I'll do a song, some stand-up comedy, show lots of slides of my cartoons about diet and lifestyle and animals and stuff, and you will laugh. I promise.
Thursday, January 8, 2009, 7 p.m., Cameron Center, 95 Mahalani Street, Wailuku, Maui
Then I fly over to Honolulu and do it again on...
Saturday, January 10, 2009, 7 p.m., McCoy Pavilion, Ala Moana Beach Park, Honolulu, Oahu

But, just when everyone is all hating me for being tan in January, I spend the week of 19 - 25th in INDIANAPOLIS!!!! Yes, the one in the middle of the snow. It's a short flight from NYC, but you get to freeze your (choose an extremity) off when you get there.
There, I'll be an "artist in residence," setting up my art supplies and computers at the Eiteljorg Museum all week and doing my regular work schedule (without the whiskey, cigars, chorus girls and cussing that usually accompany my work day) for people to gawk at like a monkey in a zoo. The only difference between me and the monkeys will be that I'll be fully clothed and answering questions politely.

On Saturday, Jan 24, there will be an all-day program with several other artists called Western and Native Reflections in Comic Books

On Sunday, Jan 25, I'll be doing one of my hour-long funny talk comedy lecture things called The Bizarro West with Dan Piraro, where I'll show cartoons I've done over the years about the Old West, Native Americans, Cowboys and Indians, etc. It'll be a shoot 'em up hootenanny you won't want to miss.

So I'll be around all week talking and being laid-back, working on cartoons, selling books and prints and trading cards, signing things, wishing I was still in Hawaii. Come on by and keep me company.

Cowboy Comedy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Macho Menswear.

There are few things I enjoy poking fun at more than cowboys. I was raised around these folks in Oklahoma and Texas and have always found their odd mixture of macho posturing and obviously effeminate clothing (high-heel boots with jangly jewelry on the heels, pearl buttons, flowery two-tone shirts, wide-brim hats, a jaunty scarf about the neck, big flashy belt buckle) amusing.

Still, the one thing about cowboys that I've always liked, besides riding horses and shooting guns at people you don't like, is the clothes. I don't wear the hat or scarf or big-ass belt buckle, but I have a small collection of kooky vintage cowboy shirts and wear them often. I like the boots, too, (only the ones with slanted heels and pointy toes, not the clunky,stubby, farmy kind) but haven't found a good pair of vegan ones.

When I was a little kid, all I wanted to be was a cowboy. That notion was based on TV shows and movies, of course. I didn't realize that being a cowboy in modern times would mean driving a pickup truck instead of a horse, listening to country music (AAAAUUUUGGH!), living in the middle of nowhere, and trading your six shooter for a cell phone.

The only appealing things left are the shirts.