Vote Early, Vote Violently

For those of you living in San Francisco area, I'd like to ask you to visit the link below and vote for Bizarro. The top four vote getters will be shown in the paper in color. Could be fun.

Thanks!

http://www.sfgate.com/comicscontest/

Goat-Mouthed Minions

Bizarro is brought to you today by Satanic Snacks.

My most heartfelt and lugubrious apologies to both of my faithful blog readers for not posting more often of late. I intend to post six days a week but have been up to my eyeballs in extra work lately.

Here is an offering which I enjoy. I've always liked goatees, even as a kid, which is LONG before they were the ubiquitous mouth frame they are today. I wore one in the early nineties, even though my (first) wife hated it and a friend of mine used to introduce me as "my friend, Satan." In contemporary art, the Devil frequently has a goatee but I have no idea why that started or how far back that goes. I've read that his arrow-tipped tail is actually a watered-down version of an erect penis, which in very early Christendom was the way he was routinely portrayed. Like much about Christian mythology, I'm guessing this image is a throwback to the satyr of Greek mythology. This is mostly conjecture on my part, so don't go use this info on Jeopardy! and blame me if you lose.

A lot of totally bald guys wear goatees, presumably because they want to have some form of hair decoration on their head and lone mustaches have come to be seen as "gay". A full beard on a bald guy is fine, but I'm not sure of the best way to handle the end of the beard, where it meets the bald head above the ears. A sharply trimmed end seems too abrupt and can make the beard look pasted on. A fade-out from beard to bald seems best, but that's got to be very difficult to achieve and maintain.

The musician, Moby, has a head undecorated by hair (except for eyebrows) and not only likes it that way but is a little militant about it. He once criticized bald guys with goatees in a conversation with me, which struck me as odd since I was wearing something similar – my current mustache and "soul patch". I'm not completely bald, so maybe that made him feel it was appropriate. Regardless, that experience was in the back of my mind when I wrote this cartoon.

While I like goatees, I know there are those who don't and will likely get a laugh from this cartoon. Or email it to their friends with goatees, in an effort to get their goat.

Why Does Marvel Front-Load Its Release Schedule?

Here's something that's bothered me for a while now:

Take a look at Marvel's release schedule for May, in terms of how many new comics are being released each week:

May 5: 46 titles
May 12: 20 titles
May 19: 18 titles
May 26: 14 titles

There are more than twice as may titles being released on the first week as there are any other week. That's 47% of their total monthly output scheduled for the first week. This pattern is not atypical for Marvel.

Mu question is: why? Do they count on many of these titles slipping a week or two? Are they playing games with FOC dates? Do they want reorders to show up on that month's shipping to game the monthly Diamond market share?

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...

Monkey Covers

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

Lulu doesn't read the signs on the cover of Marge's Little Lulu #159 (Either that, or she just doesn't care. Or the monkey is sneaky. Yeah, that's it—those sneaky monkeys!)


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

Valentine's Ten of a Kind

With apologies to everyone's favorite Little Stuffed Bull...














The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21
Batman: The Long Halloween #5
Donald Duck #7 (2005)
Harlequin Valentine
Laugh Comics Digest #129
Looney Tunes #171
Love Fights #1
P.S. Magazine: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly #75
Simpsons Comics #106
Slacker Comics #7

(Covers courtesy of the GCD.)

About that Smallville Episode

An episode of the long-running Smallville, written by a DC Comics scribe, directed by one of the show's stars, and featuring a classic DC character.

No, not "Absolute Justice." That was something of a train wreck.

Instead I refer to last night's episode, "Warrior." It was written by Bryan Q. Miller (recent scribe of Batgirl & Teen Titans), directed by Allison Mack, and featured the return of Zatanna in a supporting role.

And it was a good deal of fun.

The plot involved a cursed comic book that turned an eleven-year-old kid into an adult super-hero (shades of Captain Marvel). While Clark & Zatanna try to find the comic and restore the kid to normal, Chloe crushes on the new hero in town. Oh, and Lois Lane dresses up as both a Storm Trooper and Xena at the Metropolis Comic Con.

One of the themes of the episode was that you need a bit of whimsy in your life and not be so serious all the time; a lesson the show itself could stand to learn. If only Smallville were this much fun more often, it would be a much better show.