Cunninglinguist

Bizarro is brought to you today by Racist Sexist Sausage.

This cartoon doesn't make literal sense, really, but it amuses me nonetheless. "Nonetheless" is an odd word, created by shoving together three words that people said regularly to make a single word. Other examples are "furthermore," "therefore," and "notwithstanding." Seems kind of random.

Why have we not done this with Iloveyou? Or soanyway? Or yourenotgonnabelievethis, howhaveyoubeen, yourekiddingme, getoffofme, wheresmydamngun, or howmanytimesdoIhavetotellyouIamnotgay?

I don't speak German, but I've heard that language does this a lot.

Untilnexttime...

One Man's Pants, Another Man's Pariah

Bizarro is brought to you today by Athletes in Love.

I've long been amazed by baggy pants fashion. When it first began (back in the early nineties?), I laughed and felt secure in my predictions that it would not last very long. Apparently, I'm no Nostradamus.

As open minded as I like to think I am, I cannot even pretend to understand it. First and foremost, it is uncomfortable to have one's pants falling down all the time. At the very least, you've got to constantly hold them up somehow or you'll trip over them, and god forbid you should have to take off running. It is the sole reason belts and suspenders were invented, for instance. So you could run away and have both hands free for waiving frantically in the air. I am reminded of a scene from a movie I saw once where an outhouse was set afire while a person was in mid-business. He burst out of the door at top speed but only made it a few feet before his chin hit the ground.

Apart from the inconvenience of having to monitor your pants falling off is the obvious ludicrousness of it being the "style" to show your underwear. What has for centuries been the cliche nightmare of people the night before a public speaking engagement, is suddenly the height of cool. When did this happen, exactly? Was I out of the country?

I've done a few cartoons over the years about this topic but I'm still not tired of it. Fifteen years after the trend began, guys are still hobbling around New York City like bowlegged penguins, trying to keep their gigantic pants from falling below their knees, so I'm still drawing cartoons about it. But just when I thought I'd seen the most absurd trend my cockamamie species could possibly concoct, I discovered a behavior even more ridiculous: the passing of laws against it. Apparently, some communities are actually fining and jailing people for a fashion. I won't argue that baggy pants and exposed underwear is an eyesore, but verboten by law? What part of the world do we live in again?

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm not saying I'm a big fan of really tight pants, either, just so you know.

Gladness

This special Prodigal Son Edition of Bizarro is brought to you by Omnipotent Shipping.

Just got back late last night from the family reunion/wedding in my home state of Oklahoma. It was a harrowing adventure fraught with missed connections, misdirected luggage, airline incompetence, an auto accident, and a roach motel in Memphis whose airport shuttle driver is a former NYC pimp. The family events were even scarier. More about that in the days to come, after I catch up on a deadline or two.

For now, here is a tasty little morsel of cartooning that I hope you enjoy. This isn't one of my preachy environmental cartoons, it's just an amusing visual about what what will happen to all those tiny islands we cartoonists draw in those stranded-on-a-desert-island cartoons we are so fond of, if indeed the sea level rises.

This is a scientifically researched and accurate representation of such a scenario; tiny islands would disappear beneath the surface of the sea. Trees would pierce the surface in many instances, appearing to float. Caption balloons, being attached to their orator by the laws of graphics, would be at least partially obscured.

Climate Change will be as devastating to humor as it will be to flora and fauna.

Monkey Covers

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

Bigby Wolf has been turned into a chimpanzee on Brian Bolland's cover to Jack of Fables #34 (2009).

(Standard disclaimer about how wolves who have been turned into chimps aren't really 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: The Last Straw
2 (+1). Watchmen
3 (+1). Diary of a Wimpy Kid
4 (-2). Final Crisis
5 (+1). Time of Your Life (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 4)
6 (-1). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
7 (+2). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
8 (+13). Maximum Ride, Vol. 1 Manga (kindle)
9 (+4). Batman: The Killing Joke
10 (+1). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
11 (+18). Wolves at the Gate (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 3)
12 (+6). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
13 (-6). The Photographer: Into war-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders
14 (+3). The Complete Persepolis
15 (+25). The Long Way Home (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 1)
16 (+6). Warriors: Tigerstar and Sasha #3: Return to the Clans
17 (N). No Future For You (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 2)
18 (+2). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
19 (+17). Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days
20 (+15). Batman: R.I.P.
21 (N). The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics
22 (+1). Batman: Year One
23 (-15). Mercy Thompson Homecoming *
24 (-5). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
25 (-15). The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 3: Century, No. 1: 1910
26 (N). Star Wars: Vector Volume 2 - Chapters 3 & 4
27 (N). Predators and Prey (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 5) *
28 (+9). The Joker
29 (+19). Serenity, Vol. 1: Those Left Behind
30 (-). The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1
31 (N). Empowered, Vol. 5
32 (+2). Starman Omnibus Vol. 3
33 (+5). Halo: Uprising
34 (N). Naruto, Volume 45 *
35 (+4). Bone: One Volume Edition
33 (-8). The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes
34 (+11). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
35 (+7). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
36 (N). The Complete Peanuts 1971-1974 Box Set *
37 (N). Unmanned (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1)
38 (N). Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War, Vol. 2
39 (-7). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
40 (-9). The Sandman Vol. 3: Dream Country
41 (+3). Batman: The Long Halloween
42 (N). The Ultimates Omnibus *
43 (N). Fruits Basket Volume 23 *
44 (N). Blueberry Girl
45 (-2). The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb *
46 (-30). V for Vendetta
47 (N). Punisher Max, Vol. 5
48 (-34). Stephen King's Dark Tower: Treachery
49 (-23). American Born Chinese
50 (N). Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Movie Prequel - Alliance


Items with asterisks (*) are pre-order items.


Commentary:

* Earlier in the Week Final Crisis was at #1, but it has since fallen a bit though it still remains at #4.

* Huge surge for Buffy titles this week, with vol. 4 moving ahead of a Wimpy Kid volume, and others taking huge leaps up the chart.

* The good news for Marvel is that a couple of their super-hero books chart this week. The bad news is that their Dark Tower book falls precipitously.

* The Kindle edition of the Maximum Ride manga is very popular. Why that format for that title?

* A new Naruto volume shows up for preorder. Expect it to rise up the charts until it's release in a few weeks.

Body Snatchers

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Eight Dead Pop Stars.

So Jacko is dead. I've done a few Michael Jackson cartoons and posts over the years and I was no kinder to him than any other humorist. I've always felt sorry for him, though, he was obviously a supremely talented kid driven mad by a strange life and family.

Preliminary rumblings are that his death was a result of prescription drug abuse. That stuff will wear on your body and a heart attack is a classic result. As Keith Richards well knows, home-grown drugs are a lot safer than some of the poisons that Big Pharm puts out. (Although there are unsubstantiated reports that Keith Richards has been dead for years and that the copious amounts of drugs in him are only creating the appearance of life.)

More surprising than his death was how much of the news cycle this story has and still is devouring. I personally think that few people short of a figure of national political importance deserves so many hours of non-stop reporting. There was nothing to report in the end, other than that he was famous, he was relatively young, he died. I sympathize with the news anchors who had to stay on the air hour after hour and think of things to say. It must have been excruciating and exhausting.

One person who is undoubtedly happy about this news is Governor Mark Sanford, who's own public insanity has been bumped from the headlines for now.

I was born seven weeks after Michael Jackson in 1958, I can't help but wonder if I'll be dead of a heart attack seven weeks from now. The fact that I have not abused my body for most of my adult life with eating disorders, elective surgery, prescription drugs, and god-knows-what-else will likely work in my favor in this regard. I hope so, anyway.

NOTE: I'm off for a few days to a family reunion and wedding and won't be posting until Tuesday of next week. Have a great weekend, mi amigos.

Captain EO

That's right: Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

(image courtesy of the Comic Book Database)